FRANK WEBSTER


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	Press for Lost Horizon 9/2/2010 "Where Head Shop playfully re-purposes our past, Lost Horizon alludes to a bleaker future. In the center of the room sits a cast resin rock, a sleek token of artist Peter Eide’s trip up a mountain. Like many of the other pieces on display, it feels like a mock artifact plucked from an ebbing landscape. Martin Gruendel offers shaped blue panels resembling shards of sky or “shattered perspective lines,” according to Miller. Equally haunting in their delicacy are Frank Webster’s watercolors of trees and other forested non-sites which, along with Colby Bird’s sagging faux-natural backdrop, resound with stillness. But perhaps most disarming is Jonah Groeneboer’s piece, which quietly hugs the corner and suggests a kind of topography that is both glassy and engineered." http://www.frieze.com/shows/print_review/summer_camp/ http://dianepernet.typepad.com/diane/2010/08/lost-horizon-and-head-shop-at-exile-gallerys-summer-camp-series.html http://www.artslant.com/ber/events/show/119732-lost-horizonhead-shop-summer-camp-2010 http://www.sosomagazine.com/soso/Older.html http://www.thisisexile.com/project_summercampII.html http://www.jerseycityindependent.com/2010/08/11/artist-and-diy-publisher-billy-miller-curates-european-exhibitions-this-summer/



	Frieze Magazine review of Summer Camp/Lost Horizons 8/17/2010 Frieze Summer Camp Exile, Berlin, Germany by Sam Williams "Questions about the role of art in a changing world are circling all of this. One possible interpretation is offered by J.G. Ballard: ‘After Freud’s exploration within the psyche it is now the outer world of reality which must be quantified and eroticised’ (Ambit # 36, 1968). So what is art doing when it presents itself in curiosity cabinets of its own design? The lost horizons are not the ideals of the swinging seventies; what’s lost is the horizon itself, disappearing in the sonic boom of a present which is overtaking the future."



	Konst i Brooklyn 7/19/2010 Ofta är det i Brooklyn det händer. Ett av mina favoritområde är det runt Gowanuskanalen. Speciellt eftersom tunnelbanan går på en stor bro av stål precis vid 9th Street.



	Lost Horizon, Exile, Berlin 7/8/2010 This July and August Exile presents its second annual Summer Camp curated by New York based artist, writer, editor and independent publisher Billy Miller. For this year's SummerCamp Miller curated two simultaneous exhibitions entitled Head Shop and Lost Horizon: Head Shop is both a nod to legendary ‘60s bohemian boutiques like Granny Takes A Trip, and an evocation of the idea of the mind as a storehouse of images and potentialities. Artists: Dan Acton, The Agitators, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Brian Belott, Nina Bovasso, Matt Borruso, Larry Carlson, Ryan Cummings, TM Davy, Michael Economy, Krista Figacz, Janie Geiser, Fritz Haeg, Christian Holstad, Brian Kenny, Paul Kopkau, Steve LaFreniere, Justin Lowe, Noah Lyon, Michael Magnan, Rachel Mason, Glynnis McDaris, Ashleigh Nankivell, Mary Nicholson, Darinka Novitovic, Genesis P. Orridge, Jason Peters, Kevin Regan, Alex Rose, Desi Santiago, Barbara Sullivan, Jan Wandrag, David West, Justin Yockel Lost Horizon takes its title from the book and film of the same name, and suggests aspects of American Western mythology and “lost” possibilities - ecological, cultural, personal and otherwise. Artists: D-L Alvarez, Rachel Beach, Michael Bilsborough, Colby Bird, Matthew Burcaw, Kathe Burkhart, Luke Butler, Brendan Carroll, Walt Cassidy, Wayne Coe, Reuben Cox, Pia Dehne, Peter Eide, Carl Ferrero, Jonah Freeman, Janine Gordon, Jonah Groeneboer, Marcus Gruendel, Tina Hejtmanek, Scott Hug, Stephen Irwin, Item Idem + Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Pat Keesey, Lisa Kirk, Lewis Klahr, Martin Kohout, Kristian Kozul, Paul Lee, Peter Maloney, Glynnis McDaris, Dean Sameshima, Florent Tillon, Frank Webster, Ken Warneke SummerCamp Events July 17, 7-10pm: SummerCamp Opening at Exile July 18: Screeing at Wowsville Berlin July 20: Screeing at Basso Berlin July 24: Opening White Cubicle Installation, London July 31, 7-10pm: STH #67 Launch, Exile



	art + architecture show at the gowanus ballroom 6/23/2010 a group show dedicated to the exploration of art, architecture + the body 55 9th street, brooklyn, ny 11215 [in-between smith street & 2nd Ave] smith + 9th stop on the f + g opening thurs July 8th, 6pm – 11pm



	Summer Solstice, The Page Bond Gallery, Richmond VA 6/22/2010 SUMMER SOLSTICE: Group Exhibition Catherine Brooks Nancy Bruce Corey Drieth Amber George Reni Gower Sarah Irvin Julian Jackson Rosemary Kate Jesionowski Michael Jones McKean Gigi Mills B. Millner Sarah Rebekah Byrd Mizer Ruby Palmer Curtis Ripley Alyssa Salomon Tanja Softic James Stroud Robert Walz Frank Webster Summer Solstice, the annual summer group exhibition, will include painting, photography, sculpture and work on paper by gallery artists. These works will be at the Page Bond Gallery, 1625 West Main Street with an opening reception honoring the artists, Wednesday, July 7, 2010 from 7 to 9 PM. The exhibition will remain on view through Friday, August 30, 2010. http://www.pagebondgallery.com/#/future/94



	Zing Magazine 5/24/2010 "Instead of hopeful escape we have, rather, a notion of cynical defense—a reveling in the seemingly inevitable, failure not obviated but at least mitigated by active embrace. If early modern painters such as Manet depicted leisure activities alongside the nineteenth-century culture of industry, Frank Webster depicts leisure activities alongside the twentieth-century culture of consumption. The resultant subject matter: the strip mall and its faithful counterpart, the parking garage. Here, finally, consumption and leisure happily and succinctly coalesce, and sociability is intertwined with buying. Paintings such as mini-mart, and parking garage, impeccably embody a certain brand—brand name?—of Americana. Devoid of distinguishing features, they possess a vacuous and deadened air, the paradoxical hallmark of suburbia. So too do they comment on commodity culture in another way, their pastel colors and flat shapes steering them towards hotel art, the final destination, as we now know, of Modernist abstraction. (Clearly, “Visitor” favors a certain lineage of Modernism, in which modern art is read to symptomatize Modernity’s temporal and spatial complexity, over another, in which Modern art is seen to refuse Modernity entirely and retreat into artistic autonomy. Webster sardonically underscores the second version’s ultimate failure. To be sure, the signs of high art—flatness, geometric abstraction, limited palette—obediently appear, but they remain but that: signs, their original verve attenuated by, as the now-familiar story goes, assimilation into the mainstream. The only paintings included in “Visitor” ironically negate that very practice, functioning not to counterpoint but to assert the prominence of photography and film.)"



	The Brooklyn Rail 5/24/2010 ARENA@FEED Tamara Zahaykevich’s small, glued foam core sculptures line the walls of the “drawing space” at Arena@Feed. She has nicknamed them with terms of endearment—“Lil’ Airport,” “Chairy”—which befit their poetic quality and evocation of children’s toys. Though vaguely referential, interpretations may be as varied as viewers. Tiny upright piano twins or sedentary grandparents seem to stare at you from seats on the veranda. There is also a small pink baby grand, a white camera we can’t take seriously and which could at any moment spurt water at us, and off-color oddly shaped battleship, and a bathroom toothbrush holder with slotted depressions for cups. These warm and intimate objects complement Frank Webster’s large oils of alienated corners of Americana in the main gallery. Scenes from a Chelsea sidewalk or a Midwestern storage facility are painted in the same colorless palette, equalizing the locales and calling into focus the unifying emotive power of his work. The same anonymity could be experienced on a Los Angeles freeway or at a Staten Island Sheraton. Here are those notoriously ugly and alienating 60s facades that now interest us. The view changes with time as the diner is demolished and a BarBQ Hut goes up in its place. Architectural styles evolve and we embrace or disdain them, but have little control. In the same way that an artist chooses his/her subject, we observe buildings without taking responsibility. When we arrive at LaGuardia, the American Airlines terminal greets us. In his painting “Storage Space and Mountain,” Webster shows us a desolate scene with a majestic mountainous shape colored as if in cloud cover. It fits our conception of “The Rockies.” In reality, Webster admits he grew up in Indiana and the shape was inspired by a gravel heap that had significance for him because he had seen it so often as a kid. It is this kind of transformation—of mundane sidewalk edges or childhood memories into quiet vistas, cool and anonymous; of a child finding a “majestic mountain” in a gravel heap behind a storage complex—that brings the work to life. A watchtower, strangely flat and permeable like an ethereal God, is thus entitled “Air Traffic Control Tower.” The work of Frank Webster and Tamara Zahayevich will be on view until March 4th.



	oh what a world, what a world 5/24/2010 stark urban scenes i've seen a million times somehow become amazingly beautiful and special when isolated in these paintings...



	Madame Le Figaro 4/10/2010 Brooklyn a toujours été le terrain d’inspiration d’artistes et musiciens. Dans sa dernière série de tableaux, Frank Webster explore les relations intimes entre la nature et l’environnement artificiel de cette zone où il fut en résidence, à la Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation (Dumbo). Parfois, le langage urbain se mue en un chant profondément poétique, comme le souligne le compositeur Henri Scars Struck, qui a produit l’album Buffalo Gals: Back to Skool, l’une des plus grandes réussites du slam, avec tous les poètes du spoken word de Brooklyn. C’était il y a plus de dix ans. Quelles surprises nous réservera Brooklyn dans dix ans ?



	Art in America 4/7/2010 New York In pared-down paintings that intersperse nature imagery with urban scenes, 43-year-old, Brooklyn-based artist Frank Webster purveys an ethos of isolation. High-rise buildings and patterns formed by electrical wires, chain-link fences, scraggly vines and tree branches are depicted against wide expanses of bleak grayish skies. Portentously titled “In the Landscape of Extinction,” this exhibition reduced urban existence to these few elements, which are repeated in six large-scale acrylic paintings (either 80 by 60 or 86 by 65 inches), along with two smaller canvases and a series of 12 watercolor and pencil drawings on paper (all works 2009).



	opal nest 3/23/2010 "In the Landscape of Extinction..." images of the opening.



	The Lo-Down 3/11/2010 Another show that closes on Sunday is “In the Landscape of Extinction… ” by artist Frank Webster at Blackston Gallery (29C Ludlow). While the large-scale paintings resemble cityscapes, there are also some nice pencil sketches tucked away in the back room. The larger acrylic pieces have a very photographic feel, which may come from the beautiful sky backgrounds that depict certain, delicately-lit moments.



	Frank Webster a Blackston 2/16/2010



	In The Landscape of Extinction... 2/12/2010 Frank Webster's current paintings at BLACKSTON are of "abstracted architectural structures and natural elements found in urban settings," and are quite interesting and well done. Frank Webster In The Landscape Of Extinction BLACKSTON 29C Ludlow Street January 21 - February 28



	Frank Webster. artist. Brooklyn. 2/10/2010



	In the Landscape of Extinction... 1/17/2010 In the Landscape of Extinction... Presented by Blackston January 21, 2010- February 28, 2010 Reception: January 21, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm Email info@blackstongallery.com Website www.blackstongallery.com Address 29C Ludlow Street New York (Lower East Side/Greenwich Village) NY, 10002



	Solo Exhibition 1/15/2010 FRANK WEBSTER In the Landscape of Extinction... January 21st to February 28th, 2010 Reception: Thursday, January 21st, 6 to 8 pm BLACKSTON 29C Ludlow Street, New York, NY 10002 212.695.8201 blackstongallery.com



	NADA ART FAIR MIAMI BEACH 2009 11/19/2009 See my work at the Blackston booth in Miami. NEW ART DEALERS ALLIANCE (NADA) ART FAIR DATES & TIMES December 3-6, 2009, 2009 The Deauville Beach Resort 6701 Collins Avenue Miami Beach, FL 33141 Opening Preview by Invitation Thursday, Dec 3; 10am to 2pm Open to the Public Thursday, Dec 3; 2pm to 8pm Friday, Dec 4; 10am to 8pm Saturday, Dec 5; 10am to 8pm Sunday, Dec 6; 10am to 4pm Admission is free and open to the public



	MAY 4 - JULY 31: INTERSECTIONS 6/5/2009 Intersections, curated by Tania Duvergne, explores the convergence of natural and man-made events, from cataclysmic collisions to serene cohabitations. The exhibition features 18 large paintings by artists Patty Cateura, Noah Landfield, Christopher Saunders, Sarah Trigg, Frank Webster. At Seton Hall University School of Law, One Newark Center, Newark, NJ 07102. Free and open to the public, daily 10am - 5pm. Directions. Tania Duvergne is an independent curator and art consultant based in Rutherford, New Jersey. She has an extensive curatorial resume, including curatorial work at MTA Arts for Transit and Artists Space in New York City, inSITE and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, CA, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. She received her MFA from the Sorbonne in Paris and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.



	KCLOG: The Marie Walsh Sharpe Open Studios 4/30/2009 The Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, one of the most competitive and prestigious free studio space programs in the country, had their open studios last weekend, and I wanted to share some of the highlights. The focused paintings of Frank Webster appear to capture fleeting moments at the beginning or end of a day. His most recent work has developed the subtle color shifts with careful precision that give the images a quiet, powerful authority. Webster glazes layers of detailed brushstrokes to render the light of the sky against hulking urban structures or delicate pieces of debris caught in the branches of a tree.



	Heart as Arena: Trigger 4/28/2009 The Departure Sunday, I came across some beautiful and vaguely ominous paintings by Frank Webster when I went to the Marie Walsh Sharpe open studios. Specifically it was the painting with the plane in the sky that got me. It could have just been a plane in the sky or it could have been one of those planes in the sky on that morning. I was thinking that maybe it was a case of me projecting too much into a painting. I was thinking, "When will this even get out of my head?" Then, I saw the photo in the Times from this morning's unannounced flight meanderings over Lower Manhattan. Then I realized, "Oh, right. Never." Turns out the title of the painting is The Departure, which could move in either direction, meaning-wise. Life is weird. Painting is real.



	Artnet News 8/17/2008 SPACE ARTISTS AT THE MWSAF Speaking of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation, the organization has just announced the winners of its Space Program 2008, which awards free studios in DUMBO in Brooklyn to 17 artists for a year (rather than trips into orbit). Winners include Colette and Katinka Mann, who both received a special "studio award for older artists," as well as Kim Beck, Erik Benson, Michael Paul Britto, Bibi Calderaro, Michelle Carollo, Rob Carter, Cora Cohen, Franklin Evans, Christopher Gallego, Ezra Johnson, Kakyoung Lee, Kristine Moran, Eric Sall, Diane Wah and Frank Webster. The jury for the awards included artists Matthew Deleget, Richard Haas, Mary Lucier, Harriet Shorr and Sarah Sze. The space program is now in its 18th year.



	This Modern World 7/8/2008 Architecture is the physical space of contemporary social living. Homes, offices, shopping malls, restaurants – we’ve grown up using these spaces, so naturally, artists respond to them. Much like the diversity of built environments, artists bring a variety of interpretations. This Modern World brings together a cross section of architectural representations by mid-career and emerging artists as a means of demonstrating the richness within contemporary life. Erika Wastrom and Julie Rofman, for example, use buildings as a departure point for abstraction.Wastrom presents exaggerated and impossible spaces, the multiple arms of her structures within the newsroom and gym imagining a kind of use or functionality that doesn’t exist. Likewise, Julie Rofman creates fantastical theme parks and cities completely devoid of people. It is unclear who the potential inhabitants of these spaces are, which only adds to their intrigue.We imagine them to be as strange and beautiful as the landscapes themselves. In contrast to these unfamiliar places, Eric Benson depicts familiar empty office spaces and overpasses. There is an uneasy silence to these buildings, unlike the quiet overpass of a highway, or the rooftops of a developed center depicted by Frank Webster. These spaces are oddly pristine relative to the work of Benson, or Karla Wozniak, whose gritty strip mall paintings, capture an unexpected liveliness within commercial development projects. Often many of the small plots of land these buildings rest on are littered with paper, a phenomenon that manifests itself very differently in urban centers, as the work of Ofer Wolberger documents. In his photographs, all of the spaces seem torn and ragged from use. Taking another approach, David Kapp and Steven Katz are two of only three artists in the show to depict people using these spaces, Kapp offering an energetic look at life in a metropolis. Depicting cars racing through streets and highways and buildings towering over these transportation systems, the paint itself takes on the life of the street. Katz, by contrast creates a stiller, photo-realistic representation of street scenes, his painting of the Whitney Museum, a meditation on art itself. Though aesthetically quite different, the art of Christopher Lowry Johnson and Rob Carter share many affinities with Kapp. Stylistically,Christopher Lowry Johnson has perhaps more in common with the artist than anyone else in the show, both painters using loose brushwork to build an image. The scale, however, varies drastically in both, and where Kapp focuses on the ways people interact and use city structures, Johnson studies the empty space between the viewer and the building. Carter’s connection lies primarily in his depiction of systems of travel, his photographic collages frequently representing European landscapes and buildings, as well as highways and turnpikes. At times the work itself literalizes this implied movement, the gray areas of the photographic collages a documentation of the artist’s movement and manipulation of the different parts of the picture. Collage by its very nature requires construction of surface, an integral aspect of Cheryl Molinar’s art. Her slow and meticulous working method builds a tension between this process and the movement within many of her pieces. Sarah McKenzie likewise focuses on creating layered work, using paint as a metaphor for built space, the surface actualizing the architectural framework she depicts. Such structures in part represent the suburban American dream, with all its strengths and weaknesses. Interestingly, McKenzie is one of two artists in this show using skeletal frameworks as a representation of dreams. Echo Eggebrecht’s outlines of time machines, homes, and other familiar structures as subject matter, use magic realism as a means of constructing inviting fantasy environments. The paintings seem almost implicitly designed to take the viewer somewhere better. Much like Eggebrecht, Hannah Kasper and Caroline Allison intuitively capture interior spaces. A lamp shade, a lightly colored wall, an oddly familiar couch and painting – these would-be banal furnishings are all seen as exquisitely beautiful through the lens of Kasper and Allison. Notably, the small size of Allison’s photographs keeps the viewing relationship intimate in the same way that the detailed miniatures of Micki Spiller demand close inspection.The sole sculptures of the show,Spiller’s pieces transform common objects such as books or hat boxes into bedrooms, libraries or living rooms. While the warmth of Spiller’s pieces may draw a viewer closer, Daniel Mirer’s photographs of institutional and commercial spaces seem specifically about their cold grandeur. Photographer David Allee also finds splendor in man-made structures, occasionally placing a lone figure in vast spaces not only for scale, but also as a means of softening the landscape. This sense of space is less important to George Hirose, who focuses less on capturing an overwhelming structure than finding subtly-lit architectural environments. Like the work exhibited by Mirer and Allee, Hirose captures the extraordinary within familiar exterior faces. Approaches such as this are not uncommon amongst photographers and other art makers, though the level of craft and intellectual and personal investment these artists bring to their work surely is. This Modern World not only represents a cross section of contemporary art making activity, ranging from the fantastical, the banal, and the beautiful, to the exuberant, the spent, and the flat, but also the rich diversity and variation of life that surrounds us.



	Village Voice Pick 2/15/2008 These acrylic paintings direct our attention to objects and places we seldom pay any mind: A bone-white bridge abutment is juxtaposed with olive blobs of vegetation; brown, boxy streetlights jut into a wan, horizonless sky. Sunset Park (2007) ostensibly depicts heavy electrical cables spanning an intersection, but let your eyes scan the umber window recesses of an ocher building and suddenly the dark rectangles shift to pure abstraction as they cross the dusky green stripe representing the thick wires. Webster's hodge-podge brushstrokes and tenuous fluctuations of color separate these images from poster graphics, even as they smartly play both the abstract and figurative sides of the street. Bespoke, 547 W 27th, 212-695-8201. Through March 1. — R.C. Baker



	Environ opening 2/13/2008 Pictures from the opening in Nashville



	New York Magazine 2/12/2008 The tree isn't ugly; it's just a little sad... Art Candy 2/11/08 Artist Frank Webster Paints the Much-Fabled Ugly Tree We found Frank Webster's desolate postindustrial Americana — muted tones (for the most part), no people, nondescript city blocks, factories, and interstates — to be pretty appropriate for a day like today. Dead Tree seems to be just about as chilly as the rest of us, though the looming red in the distance (presumably a sunset) is a nice reminder of a pending spring. Webster's solo show is up at the Bespoke Gallery through March 1. —Rachel Wolff