December 19 – 30, 2006
«VISIONARY DREAMS #2391-95»
video installation/cyber installation
in the gallery halls
Anna Frants is a multimedia artist living in New York. She was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. In 1989, she graduated from the Leningrad Higher School of Industrial Arts named after V.I. Mukhina (now Saint Petersburg Academy of Design), receiving a classical education. Later, mastering new fields (computer graphics and animation), she expanded her creative interests.
Anna’s works have been recognized with awards in prestigious competitions. She received a prize for her three-dimensional computer animation “Angel” at the Autodesk Planet Studio Award. Her short computer animated film “Angel” also participated in the competitive program of the SouthSide Film Festival (Pennsylvania, 2006) and in the New York festival “Red Shift” in 2004. Her works can be found in the Museum of Contemporary Art KyoseinoSato (Japan) and in private collections.
Anna Frants has participated in, and in some cases curated, numerous art exhibitions: A joint exhibition, bringing together American and Saint Petersburg artists, “Touch me” (2003, Saint Petersburg, Anna Akhmatova Museum in the Fountain House) and the festival “Vivat, Saint Petersburg!”, dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the city (2003, Baltimore Museum of Contemporary Art, USA), and the final exhibition of the international project “Sarcophagus Pagan-style or the Funeral of a Fantasizer” (2005 Berliner Kunstprojekt Berlin), Chinese International Art Exhibition (2006 Beijing).
Solo exhibitions: “Sarcophagus Pagan-style or the Funeral of a Fantasizer” at the “Quadrat” gallery (2004, Saint Petersburg), exhibition “Window” (2005 Kuoseinosato, Japan).
For several years, she has been teaching media disciplines and animation. Anna Frants is a regular author for NY Arts Magazine, dedicated to issues of contemporary art. “In her works, Anna Frants speaks in a cheerful, light language about serious, profound things, avoiding academic cliches and highbrow epithets. Using the principle of interactivity, she involves a large number of participants of different ages in her projects. /…/ The artist shows that new technologies are not just ‘entertainment’, but also the best means of depicting the inner world of a person – with all its complexities and nuances. And in this, computer art is close to traditional painting” (from an article by O. Khoroshilova).
At “Borey” Anna Frants will show installations: “Window”, “Made in Ancient Greece”, as well as a series of works from the “Static Video” and “Video Graffiti” cycles. For Anna Frants’ exhibition, the “Borey” gallery is preparing a booklet with articles written by Anna Frants on cyber and video art published in NY Arts Magazine.
Olga Khoroshilova. “Anna Frants”
Picasso once said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” This aphorism encapsulates the history of modern art – the art of revolutionaries, iconoclasts, and empirical experimenters. Children are atheists who understand the world exclusively through experience, not believing in canons. Life is a blank sheet, and every step promises a discovery. This childlike approach was how the avant-garde artists of the early 20th century – Fauvists, Cubists, Dadaists – related to art, and this chain of discoveries was continued by contemporary media artists. Among them is Anna Frants, a computer artist and curator, a serious and accomplished person, but in essence – a child.
Her creativity develops according to Picasso’s aforementioned aphorism. For five years, she indeed “painted like an adult.” From 1984 to 1989, she studied at the Mukhina School in the faculty of industrial design. She learned anatomy, made studies, mastered the basics of design, in short, mastered the stale academic canons. Having graduated and moved to the United States, she realized that industrial design was a completely meaningless occupation. She started all over again, like a child – with a clean slate. It is no coincidence that Anna Frants chose computer animation as her new occupation and studied for two years at the Pratt Institute. She then turned to contemporary art, including animation, video, and film, and continues to “learn to paint like a child” – that is, to make discoveries, follow unconventional paths, and embody fresh, non-trivial ideas in her work.
In her works, Anna Frants speaks in a cheerful, light language about serious, profound things, avoiding academic cliches and highbrow epithets. Using the principle of interactivity, she involves a large number of participants of all ages in her projects. One of Anna Frants’ most famous projects is “Touch Me,” launched in 2002. It represents a virtual studio where interactive interaction of artists occurs. Each artist modifies the proposed picture, operating with two main elements – video and sound background, which are associated with certain colors for each project participant. As a result, an endlessly changing picture with musical accompaniment is created. Among the participants of this long-running project are Alina Blumis, Elena Gubanova, Asya Nemchenok, and Vladimir Gruzdev.
“Sarcophagus, Ghanaian Style, or The Funeral of a Dreamer” (2005) is another ‘childish’ project by Frants. A white foam ball with fluttering wings hangs over lit candles. A video sequence is projected onto the ball – the life of a Ghanaian tribe interspersed with frames from family chronicles, and a spinning eye. Thus, Anna Frants, “borrowing an idea from Ghanaian peasants, fantasized about her own funeral” – cheerfully and with childlike zest. Following Anna Frants, other artists like Andrey Bartenev, Maria Baturina, and Alexey Trubetskoy offered their versions of sarcophagi and funerals.
Anna Frants manages to avoid truisms even in such an academic genre as portraiture. In her latest project “Static Video” (2006), she presented a series of electronic portraits (including that of the famous Leningrad non-conformist poet Konstantin Kuzminsky), “painted” with the help of video, computer graphics, and animation. The artist shows that new technologies are not just “entertainment,” but also the best means of depicting the inner world of a person – with all its complexities and nuances. In this, computer art is close to traditional painting.
Anna Frants’ creativity, however current and revolutionary, is somehow connected to the centuries-old experience of the “three great arts.” Media art is a bold and playful fantasizing child, but it sits on the shoulders of the academic giant.