Phil Frost
Self-taught, Frost defines his personal style as “intuitive perceptive portraiture”. In the artist’s own words: “My work is a means to chart and define an interpretation of sensorial experience through perception and the building up of a consequential visual gesture, which amounts to an accumulation of physical trace as passage interwoven through the layers of pictorial depth”.
In the 1990s he was part of the alternative New York graffiti movement and was influenced by the music scene of the period, creating images of immense expressive power that are immediately recognizable through the way they juxtapose white patterns, such as letters and symbols, on different levels.
Lineage of Continuum, 2011 - 2018
His characteristic figures have elongated faces and stylized necks that recall totems and tribal masks and are the formal elements that establish the prinicipal axes of his complex compositions. Within the superimposed planes, viewers can make out geometric patterns—including circles of various sizes, positive and negative, stars, triangles, hearts—that repeat endlessly to create an articulated structure for both the bright colours of the base and contrasting elements of light and shade, as well as incorporating all kinds of salvaged and recontextualized objects—including boxes, bottles, ladders, baseball bats, helmets, toy cars, brushes, locks, buttons, leaves, feathers, metal plates, numbers and letters.
Lapsed Stack Of Weighted Irony, 2013 - 2017 (left) and Isolated Bust of Perceptive Importance, 2005 - 2013 (right)
Ellipse of Passage includes several monumental works, one of them a diptych previously on show—in unfinished form—in Magnetic Shift, the exhibition at the Corning Tower in Albany mentioned above, as part of Frost’s work in progress. The idea of entry to another dimension of perception, indicated in the current exhibition’s title, is present in important earlier works such as Entrance to Perception Gate (2003 - 2014) or the emblematic Consequential Passage of Accumulative Experience in Perceptive Realm (2002 – 2014). Through their imposing size, some of the pieces on show here invite us to cross to the other side of the work’s surface and pass into the artist’s personal and unique universe.
Isolated Bust of Perceptive Importance, 2005 - 2013
Synthetic polymer, emulsion, spray enamel,
correction fluid, ink, paper, three sticks, two baseball bats,
various found materials on canvas wrapped wooden panel
236 x 98 x 29 cm / 93 x 38.58 x 11.42 in
Lapsed Stack Of Weighted Irony, 2013 - 2017
Synthetic polymer, emulsion, spray enamel, correction fluid, ink, paper,
coat rack, two baseball bats, tubing, brush, toy car, American flag,
various found materials on canvas wrapped wooden panel
305 x 214,5 x 38 cm / 120 x 84.5 x 15 in
Lapsed Stack Of Weighted Irony, 2013 - 2017 (side view)
Divergence of Opinion, 2014 - 2018
Synthetic polymer, emulsion, spray enamel,
correction fluid, ink, paper, brush, tin cans, nails, bottle caps,
various found materials on canvas wrapped wooden panel
213 x 305 x 21 cm / 83.86 x 120 x 8.27 in
Divergence of Opinion, 2014 - 2018 (detail)
Divergence of Opinion, 2014 - 2018 (detail)
Suture, 2004 - 2013
Synthetic polymer, emulsion, spray enamel, correction fluid,
ink, paper, various found materials on three canvas wrapped
found wooden panels (discarded sweat shop tables)
281 x 61 x 10 cm / 110.63 x 24 x 4 in each panel
Suture, 2004 - 2013 (side view)
Suture, 2004 - 2013 (detail)
Suture, 2004 - 2013 (detail)
Tourniquet, 2007 - 2013
Synthetic polymer, emulsion, spray enamel, correction fluid,
ink, paper, canvas trimmings, nails, bottle caps, tin can lids,
various debris collected from street on canvas wrapped wooden panel
274 x 213,5 x 15 cm / 108 x 84 x 6 in
Lineage of Continuum, 2011 - 2018
Synthetic polymer, emulsion, spray enamel, correction fluid,ink, paper, tin cans, nails, wooden boxes and barrel, tubings, sticks, spool, gas pump, various found materials on two canvas wrapped wooden panels
305 x 441 x 55 cm / 120 x 173.62 x 21.65 in each panel
Lineage of Continuum, 2011 - 2018 (side view)
Lineage of Continuum, 2011 - 2018 (detail)
Lineage of Continuum, 2011 - 2018 (detail)
Untitled, 2012 - 2013
Acrylic, emulsion, spray enamel, correction fluid, ink, paper on canvas
122 x 91,5 x 4 cm / 48 x 36 x 1.57 in
Untitled, 2012 - 2013
Acrylic, spray enamel, correction fluid, ink, paper on canvas
122 x 61 x 4 cm / 48 x 24 x 1.57 in
Galp Twin Stropper Twig, 2007 - 2008
Synthetic polymer, spray enamel, correction fluid, ink, graphite,
paper, American flag, three baseball bats on canvas
152 x 120 x 9 cm / 59.84 x 47.24 x 3.54 in
