EXPO CHICAGO

Nahmad Projects are proud to present a solo booth by Jan Frank (b. 1951) for the 2018 edition of EXPO CHICAGO. Showcasing new paintings alongside older works from the Plywood Paintings series (1992-1998), the booth will create a dialogue between Frank’s practice today and the past decades. “For more than a year I drew after the nude, finding descriptive line to put into stages of abstract configuration. This process still keeps going. I now work from a large body of existing lines, by other artists and myself. These are enlarged and screened on to the canvas. These lines are pure, they are tools. My archive of lines is very selective, a vocabulary of my own.” – (Jan Frank on the exhibition Jan Frank: New Paintings, 2018) Jan Frank draws the history of Abstract Expressionism together with post-modern tendencies of appropriation, reproduction, and layering of genres and timescales.The Plywood Paintings, named after their supports, lift lines and shapes from painters he admired from the recent past, webbing these marks to create fresh compositions in alkyd, oil, and ink. In his new paintings, Frank extends this interest in appropriation, with the suggestion of forms from Pollock, de Kooning, and Bourgeois, this time on canvas and introducing brightly coloured oils and elements with more complete figuration.