This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
reviews Frances stark
As her first European retrospective, The Fall of Frances Stark, travels
from the Van Abbemuseum to Lisbon’s Culturgest via the FRAC
Bourgogne, Frances Stark opens a more intimate solo show at
Greengrassi. Here the 13 delicate works on paper (most involving
collage, drawing and painting) are articulated as two distinct bodies of
work, but all demonstrate the LA-based artist and writer’s obstinate
use of writing as raw material. In the foyer, the collage depiction of a
neutral interior, Who’s on the Other Side? (all works 2007), includes a
Scott King poster, the text of which spells out an incongruous dialogue
between a wealthy Londoner and a Red Army Faction fundraiser;
the piece’s title amusingly alludes to well-off collectors’ fascination for
anything with an aura of revolution. In another interior, Oh God, I’m
So Embarrassed, Stark uses a Sean Landers exhibition poster, itself the
copy of a fax sent by Landers to his dealer, in which the artist pours out
his doubts about artmaking. In the conventional decor, symbolically
replete with umbrella and floating cutouts of moustache and bowler
hat, this cry of anxiety seems curiously tamed, childlike, absurdified.
Stark is a borrower. Beyond the occasional inclusion of other
artists’ works, she recurrently builds her delicate paper works around
literary references, ranging from Robert Musil to Goethe through the
Beatles and Emily Dickinson. At Greengrassi, she tackles Ferdydurke
(1937), a novel by the modernist polish writer Witold Gombrowicz
which describes the transformation of the thirty-year-old narrator into
a teenage boy. Stark’s use of this angst-ridden text seems first to follow
from Sean Landers’s artistic crisis, but soon becomes an entity of its
own, each piece functioning like the page of a Schwitters-esque picture
book. The first work of the series I Must Explain, Specify, Rationalize,
Classify, Etc… is a large text piece starting with the words ‘Another
preface… without a preface I cannot possibly go on’. Most of the rest
of Gombrowicz’s distressed introduction is rendered unreadable by a
dark-haired character – perhaps Stark’s reccurring alter ego Cathy. The
figure obstructs the lettering while holding a yellow spirit level under a
line, as if trying to order the text and make sense of it all. As with most of
FrAnces stArk:
Stark’s pieces, I Must Explain confronts, rather neurotically, traditional
modes of visual communication: drawing and writing, looking and
A torment
reading.
The distress of Gombrowicz’s text is counterbalanced by Stark’s
oF Follies
fresh-verging-on-cute aesthetic. Exceeding One’s Own Strength, with
its simple sentence typed on a white sheet of paper, directly refers to the
GreenGr assi, London tradition of conceptual art à la Lawrence Weiner, but the two bathers
16 January - 1 M arch hanging inside the Barbie-like ribbon bows which frame the pamphlet
seem straight out of a Busby Berkeley synchronised-swimming scene.
Likewise, the two pairs of sexy legs emerging from polka-dotted
umbrellas in Symmetry, Suffering and Dismay give Stark’s production
a satisfying distance from the book that inspired it. A Torment of
Follies fully develops the humour which has always been an important
component of Stark’s practice. Combined with the teenage angst
of Ferdydurke, such wit contributes in this new series to a complexly
multilayered reflection, at once anxious and playful, on the ups and
downs of art production. Coline Milliard
Another Chorus Individual (On Aspiration), 2008,
poster, graphite and paper collage on paper,
192 x 146 cm. courtesy the artist and Greengrassi, London
Artreview 128
REVIEWS_April Part 1.indd 128 5/3/08 11:02:51
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188  |  Page 189  |  Page 190  |  Page 191  |  Page 192  |  Page 193  |  Page 194  |  Page 195  |  Page 196  |  Page 197  |  Page 198  |  Page 199  |  Page 200  |  Page 201  |  Page 202  |  Page 203  |  Page 204  |  Page 205  |  Page 206  |  Page 207  |  Page 208  |  Page 209  |  Page 210  |  Page 211  |  Page 212  |  Page 213  |  Page 214  |  Page 215
Produced with Yudu - www.yudu.com. Publish online for free with YUDU Freedom - www.yudufreedom.com.