Christian Frosch
Interdeck - April 14 until May 19, 2007
In Guernsey Christian Frosch started working on a new series called 'Interdeck'.
Interdeck is the name given to a type of boat lacquer in keeping with the spirit of an island residency.
There are only five colours in the Interdeck range so the length of the series is self-determining. One colour is sandwiched between two wooden panels and oozes out from the sides like honey from slices of bread. The boards are hung horizontally and left. After a period of time, the weight of the lower panel overrides the surface tension and the panels separate. The experiment has taken place. This process is repeated five times, once for each colour, until the series is complete. Frosch does nothing to the surfaces. They are what they are.
Once dry the two panels are shown as a diptych, one painting in two parts. The process and the presentation unite as the panels in Frosch's arrangement are seen to be inextricably linked, although at first the viewer is not sure how or why. There is a reminder of the image of the two heads in Gregory's seminal work on perception, The Intelligent Eye, where he is discussing the idea of drawing in three-dimensional space and stereoscopic vision and shows a normal photographic image of a face alongside an image of a hollow mask. When viewed through coloured filters the two images fuse to form one three dimensional image. In Frosch's work the images were one before they were separated.
(Eric Snell)