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Artist’s Statement
I unapologetically embrace all the formal skills of object making that engage old-fashioned, soul-baring individuality with absurdity, acknowledging the pleasure, pain, and awkwardness of being human. These works never take themselves, or the fabricated insights they open onto, too seriously. I see them as alive, as walking away from the wall. It’s a feeling that the works are energetic, active in our world, not separate —they have a sort of aliveness all their own. I feel as if they have a human scale, a figurative property; in some instances more obviously and in others, less so.
Steve DeFrank (stevedefrank.com), fine artist, lover of salsa but has no rhythm, a Lucha libre (Mexican Wrestling) fanatic, BFA, Maryland Art Institute College of Art; MFA, School of Visual Arts. Awards and honors include Fulbright Scholar Mexico, Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Foundation Grant, American Academy of Arts and Letters Award to an outstanding painter. Five solo shows in New York, two-person show Provincetown Museum of Art. Way too many group shows to mention. In collections of the New Museum, SEI/West Family Collection, and the Eli and Edyth Broad Art Museum. Cover Art for the New York Times Magazine. Publications include: New York Times, Art in America, New Yorker Talk of the Town, Village Voice and Vice Magazine.