DANA FRANKFORT makes gestural paintings based upon the shape and connoted meaning of a specific word or phrase. These works, at times, appear to be abstract, invoking the pictorial language of such Color Field painters as Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. However, the very literalness of the depicted language in Frankfort’s paintings ground her work in a figural realism that is similar in spirit to Jasper Johns’ flags or targets. Although Frankfort employs language primarily for formal reasons, it is impossible to ignore the implicit meanings in the words she selects. This creates a compelling interaction between form and content as the words give the work an internal structure in which she can play with such tensions as foreground and background and pictorial edges and compositional scale.

Recently, Frankfort has expanded her imagery to include representations of the Star of David. As with her pictures of words the image in these new works is subtle. The strokes that make up the star, at times, dissolve into the background. Nevertheless, she gives the viewer enough information to recognize the symbol, which in her handling is both ambiguous and highly specific. The Star of David paintings along with the other pieces in “DF” raise fundamental questions at the core of painting: when is a work finished, what is the relationship between pictorial edges and the picture plane, and whether or not a painting is an object.

Dana Frankfort was born in Houston, Texas. She received her MFA from Yale University and was a Core Fellow at the Glassell School of Art in Houston, Texas. She most recently had a solo show at Kantor/Feuer Gallery in Los Angeles. She will participate in the upcoming exhibition “Abstract America” at the Saatchi Gallery in London.