Chunichi shinbun, evening edition, 20 April 2000
By [INOUE] Sho[ji]

Frank Born Exhibition
(until 23, Nagoya City Archives of Politics)

Looking at the works of this male American artist, age 50, who lives in San Francisco, I was moved by the sorrow experienced in a complex life that one can barely manage to endure through an ability, say, to paint. In his second solo exhibition in Nagoya, he shows paintings, each occupied with one to a few people. He is not the kind of artist who studies the context of contemporary art and make a work based on a calculation as to how to succeed, or based on a mere whim. Rough touches, unfinished quality, and a sense of loss manifested in his paintings all testify that they are not commodities for sale; but that the act of depicting the body that is a vessel of spirit helps heal the artist's self.

Born in Texas, the artist has lived the prosperous time in America. However, at the backside of the prosperity that is a bright void lies the spiritual crisis. The Vietnam War, social repression, unhappiness in family...traumas (psychological wound) and stigmas (social branding) have haunted him. He says that he paints four or five hours each day, but creates only a small number of works. He lingers a long time on a painting, completing only some 20 canvases year.

The older works depict his own family members as well as friends and their families. In the newer works, the figures are abstracted, appearing in the pictures as whitish nudes. The compositions of these figures, the distances among them, and above all the pervasive sense of solitude convey his acute urge and need to paint. Perhaps, I may be criticized for sentimentalizing his works. Still, it is the fact that the work gives the audience a reason to see, when it has a strong internal motivation.

[Signed "sho"]

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