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ABIGAIL FRANKFURT: ABSOLUTELY COO COO: Online Exclusive

Past viewing_room
1 July - 30 September 2020
  • Abigail Frankfurt was born in New York in 1973. A self-taught artist, she utilizes visual and tactile free association to create powerful mixed media collages; unique “maquettes" that are ultimately translated into large scale photographic prints.

    A central concern in Frankfurt’s practice is the intersection of image and writing; the hybrid territory where both artforms meet. Hence, language is either embedded within her works or springs from them into adjacent prose poems.

    Not properly medicated for bipolar disorder until the age of 42, Frankfurt originally started making collages as a coping mechanism. “The sensory experience cracked open my imagination like an egg flung out an open window,” the artist says.

    She began gathering abandoned magazines, comic books, photographs, buttons, pills, candy, toys, hardware, vintage porn, old postcards, metro-cards, pressed flowers, googly eyes... At the heart of her process is the therapeutic act of ripping paper and transforming faces, bodies, and settings through the layering and juxtaposition of these found materials. Then, using matte gel, acrylic paint, gouache, and sometimes oil, she creates settings that allow her characters the freedom and playfulness to exist in their own worlds; atmospheric narratives full of joy and pathos.

     

  •  "My mind wants to take care of my mind. I talk to the images. I play with them like Barbie dolls. I ask them what do they want to wear? Where do they want to go? I am able to give myself permission to make mistakes. I move my hands until my mind softens—until the hard edges of anxiety and auditory intensity quiet. My doctor says it is like wrapping gauze around my brain—gives me some extra padding."

  • c-print | edition of two

    • Several elephants with women on top of them. There is an orange tent behind them with a purple ostrich on top of it.
      Abigail Frankfurt, Elephant, 2020
    • A women in a one-piece bathing suit with a green, purple, pink, and yellow plant as a head. There is a white stork standing next to her.
      Abigail Frankfurt, Shore Leave, 2020
    • A woman posing in the middle of the street. Her body is made up of white buttons and she has a wind-up-toy on her back. There are many orange, purple, and green circles above her.
      Abigail Frankfurt, I Want Candy, 2018
    • Two women sitting next to each other both wearing white gowns. One woman has pink hair and antlers, the other has purple hair and bunny ears. There is a green plant and a colorful blue, yellow, and pink bird next to them.
      Abigail Frankfurt, Suburban World, 2019
  • "In the kitchen while my mother cooked we put cake cloches over our heads and walked around the room pretending to be aliens: 'take me to your leader'—colanders worked well too—my mother was surrounded. She protected herself from the great invasion with stories about the dust bowl and Marlon Brando in The Wild One—toe shoes that crippled her feet, grandfather's loaded pitching arm and running away from the west"
    • Black and white photo of stairs and a women in a very long dress. The women is almost completely drawn over, her head is covered by a mushroom cloud, and her body is covered in red, green, and yellow gummy bear looking objects.
      Abigail Frankfurt, Atomic, 2018
    • A man dressed in a white suite dancing inside of a phone booth. A woman dressed in a white dress dancing in another phone booth. Between the two phone booths there is a woman wearing a long red dress, standing on carpeted red stairs with her hand on an ornate wooden guardrail.
      Abigail Frankfurt, You Can Or Can You, 2019
    • A woman's face with googly eyes as skin, two bright blue eyes, and purple hair.
      Abigail Frankfurt, Eye, 2017
  • "He was full of shake and superstition. His bathroom had no ceiling—he said he was a writer but he had no hands, he said he loved the opera—but his ears were missing—he said 'I am a gardener.' The plants were all dead. I told him 'I am many things too'—I am falling backwards almost everyday—I am stuck in an elevator trapped in terrible conversation—I am running away from you and the fire you are about to light"  
    • A dinner party consisting of people sitting at a table and others dancing behind them. Some of the men have animal heads, and some of the woman have colorful drawn on hair.
      Abigail Frankfurt, Dinner and Dancing, 2020
    • A naked woman laying on her stomach, with a flower as a head. She is in front of a yellow and red peach stand.
      Abigail Frankfurt, Farmers Market, 2018
    • Two girls sleeping on a bench with bright pink and purple hair. Three other girls standing huddled together whispering. A large green frog on the floor.
      Abigail Frankfurt, Jailbirds, 2018
    • A person with a strange black and white checkered pattern covering their skin, blue hair, yellow star shaped eyes, and holding a dried up flower.
      Abigail Frankfurt, Dead Flowers, 2018
  • "a woman crawled up my fire escape and whispered through my kitchen window: 'my life has been too long;' a starless black night, not battered—rather, burned."

    • A women with purple hair and a orange and yellow polkadot bathing suit, sitting on a large flying black bird. Airplanes and falling people populate the cloudy sky behind them.
      Abigail Frankfurt, The View from Here, 2018
    • Photograph of a woman's face with big cartoony eyes, blonde hair, and open mouth drawn over it.
      Abigail Frankfurt, Absolutely Coo Coo, 2019
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