OCULUS BY FRANK MANN
December 06 – 19, 2024
Medina Art Gallery, Rome

ITSLIQUID Group is pleased to announce the opening of Oculus, a solo exhibition of the American artist Frank Mann, curated by Luca Curci, that will open on December 06 at Medina Art Gallery in Rome. The exhibition will run until December 19, 2024.

Click here to book your free ticket.

In the search for a personal abstract language, Frank Mann wants to show images made of paint (not painterly images), created to a purely artistic internal model, using procedures which through experience give freedom to the course of the imagination: the sensual quality of the surface reflects a layering of paint from which the forms are derived in the automatic sense.

The paintings explore the relation between optical principles associated with human vision, and pictorial art, by “visualizing” the process of seeing and externalizing that image concretely; they are, therefore, probative to our sense of sight and to the nature of image-making in art, a stunning reminder that how we see is fundamental to our understanding of all of the visual arts.

“I have maintained a keen interest in vision and visual perception. I believe that recognizing the value of art is linked to my experience of perception and that experience goes to the heart of extracting meaning from an image. The conscious effort to keep art at the centre of my life performs a vital function of extending my perception. Most of the paintings are an extension of my interest in vision and visual phenomena. The six major groups of work completed to date have been produced with these themes in mind. The most recent group is titled the Oculus cycle. Oculus is, simply, the Latin word that refers to the eye. It is also the name for the opening of the tip of the dome of the Pantheon in Rome and it is also a term used to describe other architectural elements that emit light, including round windows, openings, and skylights. Most of the work derives from an internal model rather than from a description of objects in nature or a virtual scene, it derives from the imagination. And the search here is primarily for visual language, and thus, to create images that I have not seen. The method requires a willingness to embrace that which is revealed through working. Ultimately, the paintings explore the mystery of seeing and realising that in a concrete way, in order to make it more real or tangible. I wish to represent vision only as it might be.” Frank Mann

“Consider the loose circular structures that organize Mann’s new series Oculus. The circle, an image of history, decrees the natural dynamism and circularity of living life. Mann infuses this form of life with bright reds, blues and yellows equally suggestive of the eyes implied by the title, the sun and the constellation of planets, as well as abstract thought processes. Yet and still, these are vehemently proud abstract paintings in the realm of Rothko, DeKooning and Marden. Mann’s work holds its own in this company with his unique brand of drawing with color to convey voluminous light and deployment of forms that provoke a multitude of valid associations. The repetition of circles in Mann’s process and the material engagement with oil paint applied to canvas has become a poetic language occupying the energy of life made visible. His paintings are the structural signs of energy, and in that mode, they work as gorgeous signs of drama played out by color and shape evocative of art’s vast and revelatory power for the possibility of transcendental experience. As Mark Rothko once said, “I do not believe that there was ever a question of being abstract or representational. It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one’s arms again. Mann’s paintings do just that.” Franklin Sirmans, Curator of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

organized by ITSLIQUID Group
curator Luca Curci
exhibition coordinator Giulia Tassi

OPENING
December 06 | 06:00 PM
Medina Art Gallery
Via Angelo Poliziano 4-6, Roma, Italy
10:00AM – 01:00PM and 03:00PM – 07:00PM | Monday – Sunday

RSVP
info@itsliquid.com | +39.3387574098
Click here to register for the event (free entry)

FRANK MANN – BIOGRAPHY

Frank Mann is an American artist interested in vision and visual perception. He has exhibited widely with major exhibitions in New York, Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Berlin. His work has been seen in exhibitions on 6 continents to date. Mann is listed in 2,000 Outstanding Artists and Designers of the Twentieth Century (2001), The Biographical Encyclopedia of American Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers (2003), The International Dictionary of Artists (2010), Internationale Kunst Heute (International Art Today), (2015), and in the 37th Edition of Who’s Who in the World (2020). Among the numerous collections that have acquired Mann’s work are the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Nice, France. He has exhibited frequently in New York as well as in Europe and his work has been included in public and private collections in the United States, in Asia, and in Europe. He participated in the exhibition, Personal Structures – Identities, Palazzo Bembo, Venice, Italy, a Collateral Event of the 58th Venice Biennale. He lives and works in New York City and in the Hudson Valley region of New York State.

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ITSLIQUID is a web-based information platform, founded in 2001 by Luca Curci, dedicated to the worldwide distribution of information about calls for entries, exhibitions, and events at some of the world’s leading art galleries, museums, and foundations selected. ITSLIQUID has already built a readership of more than 300.000 qualified subscribers. Among them are architects, designers, artists, collectors, art critics, curators, dealers, and other personalities of the International art, architecture, and design world. It provides advertising services, press office services for events and projects, articles and specials published on the website, and media partnership services.

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