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ARTCAT



Frank Webster: Metamorphoses

Bespoke Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 6th Floor, 212-695-8201
Chelsea
April 6 - April 26, 2006
Reception: Thursday, April 6, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site


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.

According to Webster, the paintings in his other bodies of work are intentionally “unglamorous and distrustful of the heroic.” The color fields of his paintings are minimalist and meditative, referencing the muted tones of aluminum siding on suburban homes—a backyard perspective that highlights the quiet beauty of mundane architecture often dismissed as ugly and ordinary.

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.

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