Dale Frank Biography

Born in 1959, Australian artist Dale Frank creates paintings that traverse between solid and liquid, minimalist and expressionist, purity and the abject. Over a 36-year career, Frank has exploredpainting’s potential through experimentations of materials and process that challenge the conceptof painting by embracing the full physical transformation process of the medium itself.

Using universal codes such as colour and form, Frank engages with the audience on a subconscious level. He transports this non-verbal communication to another parallel dimension, as if his paintingswere a kind of wormhole to another universe.

The pigmented varnishes melt and fold into abstract impressions, and unique unexpected colours from acrid pastel pink to cobalt blue are utilized. Bound to reflective Perspex, the works createimmersive and mirrored distortions, and they emit both a pop sheen and jewel-like luminosity.

Frank’s work titles inject a social and psychological element and sardonic bite. His recent paintings enact biological and chemical processes that are analogous to synaptic and molecular experiments.Like living beings, the painted surfaces continue to flow and rupture. Frank remains unsure with itsoutcome but always faithful with his process and formal decision making. As Frank claims: “Paintingshould formally create a kind of schizophrenia among the mediums and aesthetics, an abstractconceptual schizophrenia”. The work in its pure form exists only where you are not looking at it, forit is the afterimage in the viewer’s mind is where the work lies.

Selected solo exhibitions include Dale Frank (2021), Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand; The Super Spreader (2021), Neon Parc Gallery, Melbourne, Australia; Shaun taught piano(2020), Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Dale Frank (2019), Gow Langsford Gallery,Auckland, New Zealand; Dale Frank (2018), Sabco Peroxide (2016), and Toby Jugs (2014), RoslynOxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Dale Frank (2017), Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong; The SilenceRode a Donkey into Town (2012), Gallery Reis, Singapore; Dale Frank (2012), Art StatementsGallery, Hong Kong, China; and Ecstasy: 20 Years of Painting (2000), the Museum ofContemporary Art, Sydney, Australia. Selected group exhibitions include Accidents[Part II](2020), Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong, China; Penumbra (2019), Olsen Gruin Gallery, New York,USA; Dystopian Forms (2018),Pearl Lam Galleries H Queen’s, Hong Kong, China; Every BrilliantEye: Australian Art of the 1990’s (2017), National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; DancingUmbrellas (2016), Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, Australia; Lurid Beauty (2015),National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; the Adelaide Art Biennale (2014), Adelaide,Australia; the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), Venice, Italy; Les Arts de L’effervescence. Champagne!(2013), Musée des Beaux Arts de Reims, Reims, France; Inner Worlds: Portraits and Psychology(2011), National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia; and the 17th Biennale of Sydney: The Beautyof Distance, Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age (2010), Sydney, Australia.

Courtesy Pearl Lam Projects

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