Andrea Frank: Beloved Child
Marvelli Gallery, New York
April 11 - May 25, 2002
Marvelli Gallery presents Beloved Child, the second solo exhibition at the gallery of German artist Andrea Frank. In this show, she presents a series of new photographs.
The series Beloved Child is based on archive images dating from the 1930s to 70s, which were altered in the re-shooting and printing process. The series focuses on children¹s group activities such as sports, playing games, or life in vacation camps, emphasizing the role of society as a forming and educating force. Sports, play, and games are ways to learn rules and social behavior. The emotionally charged images suggest a fine line between education on the one side and manipulation or ideological molding on the other side. While this social manipulation is explicit in some images, others are more ambiguous and open to individual interpretation. Still, they all expose the same vulnerability and insecurity, which are part of every childhood, acting as "internal mirrors" and evoking memories of our own history and upbringing.
For the artist, archive images represent the database of a visual collective memory and history, as well as a bridge to personal memories. Here, the collective process of re-examining these emotionally charged and dense images from our history can be seen analogous to an individual's re-visiting of his or her childhood experiences in psychotherapy.
The pictures are cropped and manipulated in the darkroom by the artist. Through extended exposure times and subtle color shifts, details fuse to form dense corporeal masses, and the image surface acquires a painterly quality.
In her work, Andrea Frank has explored Europe¹s totalitarian past and its influence on the present times. She is a graduate of Parsons (MFA) and the Whitney Independent Study Program, NYC. In recent solo exhibitions at Marvelli Gallery in New York and Gambalunga Museum in Italy, her large photographs focused on the relationship between history, ideology and architecture.
MARVELLI GALLERY
526 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
www.marvelligallery.com
