Karl Francke

Description

Gouache and Charcoal Portrait

30" x 22.5"

Karl Francke was a child when he mistook a sculpture of a man for an actual, living man. Even after he realized his mistake, a suspicion remained. He was certain there was a person there, coded and captured in the hyper-realistic poly fiber. It had some life, if only a life removed, like a corpse. Or a portrait. Francke’s first sense of portraiture came from the old movies on latenight TV, where the paintings of dead ancestors were haunted with moving cut-out eyes. His own work echoes that paradoxical voyeurism, the living connection between the dead painting and a life smoldering behind it. Walking through a gallery of Francke’s portraits, we are never sure exactly who is studying whom, who is judging and appraising whom, and which of us are the gallery, and which the art. Portraiture is a highly structured discipline which Francke uses as both lens and mirror. The process has no set period of time; most of his pieces take months, some have taken years. Not all the characters depicted in these paintings know each other. Not all who know each other trust each other. What they have in common is that they are not at peace. They need and hide and hunger. They are us, and, for the period of the work, they are Francke. Francke’s process of work is an emotionally-driven meditation. His portraiture is an obsessive process, solipsistic, solitary and intense. It’s an anti-social activity, a wallowing exploration of emotion through the discipline of detail. Francke injects himself into the subject, sharing space beneath the skin and behind the eyes. It is, initially at least, a personal indulgence, a vibration of mood sustained beyond all reason, practicality or politeness. It is a hell which is enjoyed, but ultimately escaped. Francke’s goal is truth, honesty, insight into himself and the other. The goal is impossible. Like Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty, Francke’s work acknowledges that the closest we will ever come to “truth” is in the pursuit of it. His portraits then are a by-product of that pursuit, artifacts of an intensely obsessive and sometimes wallowing act. They are receipts of exorcism, haunted and beautiful. Through his work, we share an prolonged and rewarding intimacy with people we’d normally not feel comfortable sharing an elevator with— while always suspecting that the portraits may be, at that very moment, thinking the very same of us.

http://www.karlfrancke.com

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Additional Information