Alex Frost
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The Modern Dance, 2004
Born: 1973, London
Based: Glasgow
Represented by: Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow
Born in London in 1973, Alex Frost studied fine art at Staffordshire University (BA 1995) and Glasgow School of Art (MFA 1998). His recent solo shows include: ‘Adults’ (Sandra Burgel, Berlin); Milton Keynes Gallery; ‘BBQ’ (Artsway, Hampshire); ‘Compassion Fatigue’ (Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow), and ‘Format Wars’ (Tramway, Glasgow). Selected group shows include ‘Scala Paradisi’ (Schurmann, Berlin), ‘Friends and Family’ (Anton Kern, New York); ‘To Bring Forth and Give’ (Glasgow Print Studio), and the Annual Members show at Studio Voltaire, London. In 2009 Frost was short listed for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize and was selected by Artsway for the Venice Biennale. Frost has also devised and run a number of projects collaboratively, notably, the artist-run radio station Radio Tuesday (1998 - 2002) with Duncan Campbell and Mark Vernon. He has also curated a number of exhibitions, most recently the exhibition ‘run run’ at the Collins Gallery, Glasgow (curated with Sorcha Dallas), for Glasgow International Contemporary Art Festival (2008). Frost was awarded the Glenfiddich Residency in Banff, Scotland in 2009 and in March 2010 will present a solo show at Dundee Contemporary Arts. He lives and works in Glasgow.
Frost’s beguiling and detailed works delicately haggle with a compromised minimalist ideal. In essence, this anti-macho perspective engages processes historically relegated to craft. Frost’s tiled, mosaic sculptures and pinpricked, enamel drawings use units as an articulate and persistent motif, creating a vast field of repetition and subtle distinction. His works are achingly labour intensive. The nature of their fabrication is deliciously subverted and undermined by Frost’s own loose handling of the pieces. His drawings, for example, are repeatedly pinned to the wall before being finished, leaving traces of smudge marks, holes and folds in the paper. Frost’s works are not precious and they refuse to be sterile. Their ephemeral yet uncompromising nature seduces us. Upon close inspection their elegant yet grotty surface quality is revealed, divulging Frost’s simultaneously painstaking and slapdash methodology.
Frost orients himself by working in infinitely vacillating series. This ongoing investigation is marked by the enduring use of modularisation. As well as working with portraiture, Frost’s primary interests include the trappings of aspirational consumer culture. His source material is often derived from the products associated with adult sophistication in the 1970s and 1980s. The packaging, logos and branding associated with products such as Rice Dream and Optrex are reproduced through a deliberate and informed process of alteration and experimentation in both medium and scale. These evocative, arresting replicas, which include a series of wellness products out of polymer clay resonate with an effervescent humour, a dexterous touch and a discerning criticality.
