Phil Frost's paintings vacillate between abstraction and representation; they clearly reveal recognizable features while there is also an attempt at concealing them. Totemic figures overlaid with modernist, repetitive patterns, give the work a hypnotic effect that uses a primitive dialect. An ethereal veil of white seems to protect the richly rendered under-painting of mask-like visages. The work is tribal in its imagery and urban in its treatment. Frost fuses myriad elements, both visually and with his media, which ranges from gouache to correction fluid. His continual application of organic shapes and stylized forms become a kind of codex, a contemporary language telling a primordial story.

BIOGRAPHY