J a n F r a n k, “Kissinger and the Ladies.”
The show at BLT Gallery presents two groups of my work: one, a series of Kissinger paintings; two, a series of nudes. Ironically, the primary focus of the exhibition is on the work – the Kissinger series – that has been secondary to my concentration over the past 10 years – the nude. The focus of the show might have been inverted, but fate intervened.
On June 6th of this year I fell off the top step of a ladder. I broke both wrists and elbows. The accident severely limited the range of use of my arms, making it impossible to continue to paint the large-scale nudes I was working on. The Kissinger paintings, conversely – with their geometric strokes – benefited. Hence, the unexpected body of work that is the focus of the show.
Sitting in the garden at The Museum of Modern Art, listening to de Koonings eulogy in 1997, I decided to paint from the female nude, yet, I was determined to maintain the same commitment and rules I used in my previous works: set the grid, give as little as you can, but enough to make a painting.
I spent a year producing hundreds of drawings from the nude before embarking on the linen, this developed into five bodies of work, and five shows, mainly shown in Europe. At present I am working on the Pope Stitcher series, which originated during a stay in Sicily.
The Kissinger Paintings, showing at BLT Gallery, became a big part of my work. Because of my quirky relationship with Richard Nixon, (he appears in my dream world, as an acquaintence) and American politics, -I once in a while will produce a Nixon Show, for kicks-, I found and utilize, and in turn appropriate drawings from Philip Gustons Poor Richard sketch book, and do a small series of paintings. In the last series, (shown at Kunstruimte Wagemans, Holland, 2006) I played with Gustons Kissinger portrayal, a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. I found myself using this motif in so many ways that when I finally put everything in the mix, Mondrian popped out. I went wit hit. And the more I worked, the more evocative and transformational the work became. Steve Pyke a portrait photographer, known for his stark honesty of image, saw one of my major Kissinger pieces and arranged for Kissinger himself to be photographed in front of it.
In my previous shows in New York and abroad, the paintings were formulated with the appropriated line. Lines from history of art – De Kooning, Guston, Pollock, and Bourgeois – my grid for the ‘painting’ enabling the process of my work to be placed within the strict but organic terms I set.
The grid is a series of lines I put down on the surface, which I rework to established boundaries for my paint.
“His chunky plywood paintings scattered with wriggly squalls of black ink aren’t nearly as arbitrary or abstract as they first look. The titles of these physically elegant objects are the names of racehorses. The flurries of synthesized strokes track an ancestry that gallops from Van Gogh to de Kooning, pulverizing Guston’s stubble and Mondrian’s plus-and-minuses. The mock plywood overpainting further obliterates and absorbs.” Jan Frank at Salvatore Ala, Kim Levin, 1994
Jan Frank, New York City, January,2009
