The Omega Variant Show

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery is thrilled to present new work by Dale Frank in The Omega Variant Show, Frank's 34th solo exhibition with Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery since 1982.

A directness is necessary (strife is necessary). Too much discussion has verged into poetics for either reasons of fashion or inability. The tension of opposites is necessary, strife is necessary, be it even just a 'contradiction'. It is 'war' rather than peace, or stillness that demonstrates the changes or flux that is the root of being, that makes it clear that nothing, not even the most stable seeming is really at rest.
— Dale Frank, 1983

Frank's space depends instead on that measured emptiness as a flat surface which sometimes proposes an illusion of solidity by its very ebb and flow. "Form" cannot exist since no boundaries occur. Lines are vectors, not contours, the dense pattern functioning as a force-field in which energies or auras are plotted. The emotional disturbances in his real-time work, each with individual features and occupying its proper temporal span, seem perfectly translated. Perfectly, and again abstractly...

Jasper Johns once admitted that only three art-historical statements interested him. One was Leonardo's opinion on line as representation of the limit of the body. Like Johns's, Frank's "field" solved the same problem in a different way. But is he violating that solution by involving himself so completely with matter. The answer lies in the continuum of that world which is taking shape: solipsistic, sublime, exotic, unfree. More and more the "strife" Frank has said he desires in art, his gesture of swerving or interference, the communicated tension of the performances, seem identical — tests of consciousness, that sudden fright or pinch by which we make certain we are still alive.
— Stuart Morgan, ARTFORUM, VOL XXII, No 10. 1984

Dale Frank’s abstract paintings have been exhibited internationally since the 1980s, showing at PS1, New York (1981), Biennale of Sydney (1982), 42nd Venice Biennale (1983 and 1984). Frank was included in the exhibition Panorama della post - critica: critica ed arte at the Museo Palazzo Lanfranchi in Pisa along with Thomas Lawson and Anselm Kiefer. Recent selected group exhibitions include Unpainting, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2017-18); Dark Heart, curated by Nick Mitzevich, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia (2014); Mix Tape 1980s: Appropriation, Subculture, Critical Style, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013); and Les Arts De L’effervescence Champagne, Musée des Beaux Arts de Reims, France (2013). In 2013, his work was featured in Personal Structures at the Palazzo Bembo as part of the official program of the 55th Venice Biennale. A major solo retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney in 2000. Frank’s work is held in all major Australian state galleries, and a number of regional and university collections. It is also held in international collections, including Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, New Zealand; Musée de Ville de Leige, Leige; Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Zurich Kunsthaus; and a number of corporate collections.

This is Dale Frank's 34th solo exhibition with the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery.