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Email PageUnveiling
January 26, 2006- March 11, 2006
Natalie Frank
Nicholas Robinson Gallery
535 W 20th St Natalie Frank Leftover Girls (2005) |
Lurking within this feminine miasma, are signs of male dominance - flag poles, drainage and sewage pipes are the literal symbols of masculinity. However, female subjugation is often expressed through more universal symbols of traditional women’s roles, like flowers, luxurious fabrics, even a white wedding dress. In Portrait, the woman’s sensuous eyes plead through a thick veil of flowers that appear to be drowning her. There are two female figures in the foreground of Leftover Girls, one clad in a wedding dress and prim white gloves, with the bride’s face as bruised as the painting’s title might suggest. It is these traditionally gender based ciphers which seem to be putting Frank’s women “in their place”. However, the true strength of the paintings lies in the tension they create between oppression and empowerment. The treatment of the gaze tends towards calmness and stoicism and is often direct. Perhaps Frank’s tense characters aren’t victims after all but rather a collection of well disguised heroines - protagonists who flirt with both misogyny and feminism in order to metaphorically represent the status of women artists in general, and the dichotomy at the heart of this debate.
Only in her second year at Columbia’s MFA program Frank’s work displays maturity and self awareness. In many of the paintings, the viewer is left to wonder if the artist is depicting herself, and can speculate whether the surreal and dream-like environments are colored with autobiographical detail. The ambiguous narratives consist of lush romanticism tinged with theatricality and a tacit homage to grand history painting.
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Nicholas Robinson Gallery was last updated: 2008-11-21
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