Frances Stark Review- Naveen

I had the first setback at the reception when I was told very courteously that Photography is prohibited inside the gallery and so I had to make mental notes while I went around the space.

From my point of view I found Frances Starks’s Gallery to be an exhibit par excellence. I was drawn towards her collages formed by combination of text, word, writings & images, which seems to be taken from varied collected pictorial source material. The intricately textured collages made with snippets of text and graphic elements finds interrelations between art and literature and image and text. When I entered the gallery I witnessed the diaphanous paper works having a frenetic quality that thematically unleashes the transcripts with sketches and literary appropriations, mesmerizing me to go further ahead.

I left the gallery while debating to myself on some of the thought provoking art work:

An excellent hieroglyphic Paper Collage titled Chorus Girl folding self in half. I found the circles to be a playful use of material to unfold the pictorial language while sharing the mechanisms of the dynamic interaction. Overall the visual appeal of the picture was more profound while concentrating on one circle and others seem to acquire dynamic shifts, to highlight the multiple aspects of life where paths criss-cross again and again.

An image of a peacock collage exhibiting their extravagant tail feathers with text pulled from literature rolls down & meticulously sews together to match the various layers of symmetry.

A mixed media on paper collage of a woman clinging to a slippery pole and a peacock beside her also caught my attention. Both images seem to be crafted out of the artists imagination while the women looks exposed and precarious and the bird imperiously looks the other way.

The In & In Collage is a stack of two papers meticulously arranged with text and images. The images pinpoint the task of sifting through the regular piles of reading followed by the dull process of sorting out the junk mails. The collective art addresses the paradox of reproducing visuals that are non photogenic by nature.