Projects Gallery Philadelphia (which represents my work in Miami and in Philly) has a great exhibition coming that deserves a mention in DC's best art blog (since I lived in the Philly suburbs from 2006-1009... cough, cough).
They will showcase The Frontier, a solo exhibition by Frank Hyder. Works being featured include mixed media paintings on Mylar and illuminated sculptures. This show is held in conjunction with Hyder’s installation “Sea Dream“ on display in Terminal C of the Philadelphia Airport.
Hyder has reached into his past and leans into the future with this dynamic series of works. For more than thirty years, innovative use of woodcuts such as “Sea Watcher” in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and shaman prints, again part of the PMA and the Library of Congress collections, have been signature works for this native Philadelphian and now Miami resident. In recent years, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Caracas and the Museum of Catholic Art and History in New York City have provided venues for his large-scale installations, combining sculpture, prints and painting to create narratives about the forest and traditions of the Americas.
The Frontier series began as a site-specific installation painting for the Miami Beach host site of the Select Art Fair during Art Basel Miami 2012. The main element of this installation was a 7 x 20 ft. mixed media work on Mylar that filled the stairway glass walls connecting two floors of the fair. Moving up or down these stairs immersed the viewer into the painting and environment of the forest. The work is peppered with digital prints on tracing paper, supplying sporadic bursts of color throughout. The forest is dominated by black and white contrast, a contrast that continues throughout the works of the show.
Developing on the concept, Hyder has made paintings that focus on these prints and how they are fitted into the invented landscapes that surround them. He continues using this black-and-white-versus-color concept in a series of 3-dimensional LED illuminated prints on shaped Plexiglas, which create a small, lighted installation in one room of the gallery. The artist also steps off the wall here with freestanding sculptures from his “Chrysalis Series.” These sinuous standing forms are abstractly animated by collaged black and white woodcuts and eerie luminous colored light.
Developing on the concept, Hyder has made paintings that focus on these prints and how they are fitted into the invented landscapes that surround them. He continues using this black-and-white-versus-color concept in a series of 3-dimensional LED illuminated prints on shaped Plexiglas, which create a small, lighted installation in one room of the gallery. The artist also steps off the wall here with freestanding sculptures from his “Chrysalis Series.” These sinuous standing forms are abstractly animated by collaged black and white woodcuts and eerie luminous colored light.
This truly international artist has had over 100 solo exhibitions, including nine in New York City and throughout all of the Americas, Europe and Asia. In the past year he has shown in Atlanta, Hong Kong, London, Miami, Singapore and Toronto. He is one of the few North Americans to have had solo exhibitions in major museums in Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. Other solo museum exhibitions include the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art’s Museum of American Art, the La Salle Museum of Art, the Susquehanna Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum in California. For the past several years, he has participated in “Giants in the City,” whose heroic inflatables exhibit during Art Basel Miami.
His works are in the collections of art museums in Philadelphia, Grand Rapids, Ontario, Caracas and Maracaibo, Venezuela, as well as the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Library of Congress and in numerable corporate and private collections. Major awards include a Senior Fulbright Research Grant to Venezuela, U.S. Embassy Cultural Grants, MidAtlantic NEA, two Pennsylvania State Council Grants and an International Art Programming Network Partners Grant. Public commissions include the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program “Hanging Garden of I-95”, “Honey’s” and “Bell’s Pond” wall murals; Terminal Freezer, Oxnard, CA, ceramic wall mural; and the Museo Jacobo Borges “Bridge of Life” ceramic walkway in Caracas, Venezuela.
The Frontier will run April 5 – June 15, 2013 with an artist reception on First Friday, May 3rd from 6-9. The reception is free and open to the public. Projects Gallery is located at 629 N. 2nd St. in Philadelphia’s Northern Liberties section. A preview of works may be viewed on the gallery’s website at www.projectsgallery.com. For more information and images, please contact Projects Gallery at 267-303-9652 or info@projectsgallery.com
