Lot 44: PHIL FROST

Thunderwhisper

96 x 229 in. (243.8 x 581.7 cm)

mixed media on wood in 21 parts

2004

Cincinnati, Contemporary Arts Center; San Francisco, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; Newport Beach, Orange County Museum of Art; Baltimore, The Contemporary Museum; Tampa, USF Contemporary Art Museum; Milan, La Triennale Di Milano; Lille, Le Tri Postal; Lodz, Muzeum Sztuki; Madrid, La Casa Encendida, <em>Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture</em>, 13 March 2004- 4 January 2009

Rose, Aaron, and Christian Strike, eds. <em>Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture</em>. New York: D.A.P./ Iconoclast, 2005, p 259. (Illustrated)

Acquired directly from the artist
Private collection

Self-taught artist, Phil Frost, harnesses aspects of urban culture, abstraction, tribalism, and modern design to fashion his unique portfolio of work. Incorporating painted walls, graffiti, and collage as well as found objects and imagery to craft his large scale pieces- Frost fuses many different mediums to create elaborate masterpieces for the Contemporary Art scene. In the 1990s, Frost first honed his skills by painting walls and found materials with his intricate and highly stylized form of graffiti. Shifting between formal design and primitivism, abstract and figurative, he meticulously evolved his colorful mixed-media paintings and sculptures by layering on top of flat, symmetrical patterning. Nearly everything Frost creates is finished with a tight, sparkling white pattern, which allows fragments of bold colors and contrasting materials to shine though. This crisp white patterning set against the intricacies of the rest of the piece is what cohesively ties each work together, and has become Frost&#8217;s signature technique. Drawn free-hand with a correction fluid pen, without the use of stenciling, the brightness of the white pattern often appears to form a mysterious code or exotic language, composed of letters, hearts, dots and mask-like faces, evocative of tribal and indigenous art of the Australian or African continents.

These symbols, which the artist refers to as &#8220;glyphic distinctions,&#8221; painted on top of the heavily textured backgrounds, create a dialogue between the viewer and the artwork. Leaving no surface untouched, Frost provides the viewer with the freedom to explore and navigate through different spaces. Because of the intricate layering of design and imagery, works may appear mechanical upon first inspection but become more easily penetrable with a closer look, where one can pore over the finely tuned techniques of this inventive artist. By combining so many different mediums and methods of creating, Phil Frost is an artist whose work is able to permeate art markets on an international level and allows his work to become accessible to many different demographics. As a result, Frost is the recipient of several grants and awards, and his idiosyncratic work is included in prominent public and private collections around the world.