Galerie Arndt & Partner Zürich is presenting the first European solo exhibition of work by the New York-based artist Natalie Frank (born 1980). At first glance, the expressive and vigorous character of her painting recalls the tradition of the London School, and she shares a trenchant view of the physicality of the body with Cecily Brown or Jenny Saville. But beyond this her opulent trails of paint give rise to a narrative space within which she assigns her figures a symbolic role in a painful chapter of 20th-century history. Perpetrators and victims constitute a grotesque Panopticon in a contemporary guise.
Created especially for the Zurich gallery, the “Desire Comes Later” series has its origins in Frank’s reading of Hannah Arendt’s political and philosophical texts on power, the banality of evil and the ominous relationship between desire and the exercise of power. While Hannah Arendt attempted to come to terms with the darker side of human emotions by means of cold, objective and thus all the more unsparing analysis, in this series Natalie Frank proceeds from image to image along the various stations of sexuality, lust and punishment. She sees violence as emanating from an imbalance in relationships. But the violence of the portrayals also spurs the artist to find the truth, and she creates a precarious balance between objectivity and exaggeration of those portrayed. Her examination is both brutal and gentle, repulsive and compassionate.
But, as if the joy of painting cannot but triumph over suffering, Natalie Frank confronts the painful depths of the human soul with her highly sensuous style of painting.
