You have to move in to look closely because Kim Frohsin’s tasty women on
their small sized canvases are whispering messages you don’t want to miss. I
have no idea why, but it’s not frustrating when you realize their messages
are incomprehensible. Unexpectedly, that’s reassuring. Like Rita, the
waitress in a Ray Carver short story, Froshin’s women seem to be thinking
"My life is going to change. I feel it” and as you look, it’s satisfying to
pick up on that feeling.

Carrying on the commitment to the figure started by David Park, Elmore
Bischoff, and others in the Bay Area Figurative Art movement, Froshin has
developed her own challenges for this show :(1) Impose a two minute time
limit on herself to capture a woman in one particular moment through a quick
life drawing. (2) Then, without losing the immediacy of the drawing, add
color and background to set a mood and call to mind the big idea— that what
is most personal is most universal. Each painting alludes to an entire
lifetime in a single pose giving just enough information to get your
imagination working. Reminds me of a quote from somewhere…”there are no
answers, seek one lovingly”. Labled as a third generation fig (Bay Area
Figurative Artist) Frohsin’s smoky atmosphere’s and faceless women are
vulnerable, lusty, mischievious, irreverent and don’t care what you think of
them, therefore you’re seduced into thinking about them.

One of my personal favorites is Blue Stage, worked in gouache, ink,
watercolor crayons and dry pigments. The woman sits pensively, one hip
jutting out provocatively, chin resting on hands, looking where? Up? Down?
Straight at you? No doubt, deep in thought. I enjoy the sense that she’s in
transition, that anything is possible. Pass the word.

Is Frohsin a revoluntionary painter or derivative? Derivative sounds snarky
but who can argue with her process of honoring, reshaping and moving the
figurative tradition forward? More names that pop up as influences are
Diebenkorn, Olivera, Joyce Carol Oates, Ray Carver and Frank Lobdell but
like Olivera, Froshin does not seem on a mission to create works that are
uniquely new. I think the woman in Blue Stage illustrates Olivera’s idea
that arts function is to, “simply reaffirms our presence and the depth of
our existence on this earth.” Froshin’s work is strong in part because it is
linked to the chain of interest in women’s experiences and like Carver or
Oates manages to capture a moment in short and palatable bites.

February 1-24th 2007

http://www.dolbychadwickgallery.com/