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ARTIST PROFILE

DALE FRANK

A NEW SORCERY

Edward Colless on why Dale Frank's

art transcends categorisation.

Photography by Jon Reid.

W

ords fail us when confront-

ed with Dale Frank’s art:

especially simple words, like

“painting” or “sculpture”. And

our encounters with Frank are

indeed always as confrontation-

al as they are captivating. In his

relentless experimentation with

• and exploitation of – sump-
  tuous chemical, physical and optical detonations
  of substance and shape, of surface and volume,
  of mass and speed, he has wildly distended and
  disintegrated these two bland descriptors and
  long left them behind. And that’s even when still
  using familiar or traditional materials and dis-
  play protocols of paint or of sculpture. A few years
  ago, art critic Andrew Frost admitted to being
  momentarily at a loss for words when asked by a
  young art student to “account for Dale Frank in
  relation to recent theories of painting”. Frank’s
  work, he justifiably declared, is “out there, all on
  its own...majestic and strange.” But its contem-
  poraneity could be grasped with an idea that had
  been percolating through the avant-garde since
  the mid-20th Century, an idea given theoretical
  and critical definition in the 1970s and that has
  assumed currency again today. Think of Frank’s
  work, advised Frost, as “expanded painting”. It’s a
  piece of art jargon, true; but it’s a good one when
  trying to assess Frank’s frequently astonishing
  mutations of artistic technique. For anyone un-
  familiar with the legacy of this term, picture the
  experiments in expanded cinema” – precursors to
  the contemporary VJ’s armory – which broke apart
  the economic and formal proprieties of theatrical
  screening with 1960s lightshows and happenings.
  Ambient multiple projections of found or abstract
  footage montaged, collaged, corroded and incorpo-
  rated into live musical and dance performance, like
  a deregulated mode of opera or ballet. It fits, yes?
  In its milder usage, the adjective expanded can
  liberalise a medium otherwise delimited to ac-
  tivities with, say, oil or acrylic and canvas, even
  by just adding tools like sticks, mops, buckets
  or by using a bicycle or human body for a brush;
  or using car duco or blood, food or excrement
  for paint. Painting for instance can expand into
  neighbouring subcultural zones, such as tattooing
  or graffiti, and adapt their aesthetic skills and val-
  ues; sculpture can momentarily annex industrial