Exhibitions

Venue: Galerie Sandra Buergel, Berlin

Dates: 23rd June–27th July 2007

Preview: 22nd June 2007, 7pm

The first solo exhibition of Alex Frost in Berlin includes a group of three mosaic sculptures and a smaller object made in polymer clay combined with a wall mosaic and large-size paper works from his series of ‘Blind Drawings’.

The small collection of mosaic sculptures refers to food packaging: Twinings Tea, Ryvita cracker bread and After Eight mints. Their object character can be identified by virtue of coloured patterns, inscriptions and emblems such as barcodes and logos. These products are inscribed into homely routine, likely to be served at dinner parties; something adult, artificial and pretentiously elegant adheres to them. The over-dimensioned basic forms look like they are cast in misshapen modelling clay. They are studded by Alex Frost with a multitude of broken tile pieces in an almost therapeutic activity of handiwork. This process contains repetition, a direct, simple translating of surface into ornamental patterns, and a structured building up of fragments which in their addition step up to an ambiguous new outcome.

Older works of Alex Frost such as the series of vases entitled ‘Continuous Profile’ (2004) or the mosaic table ‘Coffee table with coffee cup’ (2006) already played with ideas around sophistication crossed with a light-handed approach. Early pencil drawings on graph paper are made up of particular line marks their structure Frost created with the aid of adapted software that was used originally for the transformation of photos into patterns for knitting machines. By their consistent application of the grid as a proportional learning system and their simple break up of signs into drawn lines ( - o) they might bring to mind a somewhat clumsy but serious drawing school lesson possibly headlined ‘Value & Scale Study’. His work can be seen to be referencing the contrasting elements of illusionism and literalism, handcraft and technology (‘the analogue versus digital’), or an intention to succeed versus a flawed rationality.

The “Blind Drawings’ are started out from their reverse sides. Manually Frost pricks over an impregnated bitmap image with a perforation tool and then paints on an enamel emulsion that leaks through the holes, so that a tactile and initially insecure image emerges on the front side. The ‘Blind Drawings’ of the exhibition show a Yucca palm tree, lilies and self-portraits in a simulated three-dimensional shaping. Alex Frost eyes closed, his chin slightly raised, frontal or slightly angled, absorbed, still and as ostensibly emotionless as the making itself. The texture of the sheets (perforation, metallic colours, solarised parts) amplifies a resemblance to photographic fixing procedures and technological achievements such as electronic circuit boards, or even punch cards that were used in pre-industrial looms and as a control mechanism subsequently utilized in early analytical engines.

Sandra Buergel