Old pal and former Brooklyn roommate Frank Webster is having a show in NYC at Bespoke Gallery. He's showing some stuff he did while a visiting artist at VCU last year. Frank is cool and these new things are too (and so is his older work). Show info:
Metamorphoses by Frank Webster
April 6th – April 26th, 2006
Reception for the artist: Thursday, April 6th, 2006 from 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Bespoke Gallery is pleased to present Metamorphoses, a series of digital collages by painter Frank Webster. A reception will be held on Thursday, April 6th from 6 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. This is Frank Webster’s first solo exhibit at Bespoke Gallery.
Metamorphoses marks Webster’s first foray into the digital medium with a series of prints reminiscent of both 1970s science fiction movie posters and Russian political propaganda. The digital collages in Metamorphoses are a sub-series of a more extensive body of work called Political Science Fiction, which explores the relationships between dystopia and utopia, ecology and economics, fantasy and reality, and radical political ideology and the corporate media state.
In Metamorphoses, Webster focuses on the connection between globalization and the decline in global natural resources, in addition to the treatment of space to better serve a modern society obsessed with mobility and convenience. Webster addresses the constituents of a post-industrial architectural vernacular and what he calls the “anti-ecosystem” of parking lots and strip malls.
In his series Webster also depicts luminaries who have either intentionally or indirectly impacted the social and political landscape. In the print “Jose Bove”, Webster illustrates the French provocateur notorious for leading protests against McDonalds and destroying genetically modified crops.
Webster has sourced his own photographs and material for the digital collages, deliberately choosing images that deemphasize the art of photographic composition.
Webster links the aesthetic of collage and layering to the ideological and perceptual complexity of a post-9/11 reality: “I think this best represents the slippery and rhizome-like nature of reality at this post 9/11 period in our history.” He attributes the inspiration behind this series to a need to illustrate “a kind of personal mapping of our contemporary social condition and the environment we have created for ourselves.”
Webster's other projects have included an exploration of post-industrial architecture and the aesthetics of color field formalism.
Webster seeks to question conventional notions of appeal and, in both his paintings and in this digital series, his art attempts to reconcile the inherent conflicts in human decisions.
Webster lives in Brooklyn, New York and holds a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts. He has participated in numerous exhibits and has received many awards and fellowships.
For more information please contact Rhiannon Kubicka at Bespoke Gallery: 212-695-8201 or rtkubicka@bespokellc.com.
