Peggy Franck’s instinctive eye is drawn to form. Traversing the disciplines of photography, installation and painting, she began her material explorations by setting up sculptural tableaux in her studio and then photographing them. The desire to immerse the viewer in that image then took hold and Franck started to open up the compositions themselves, transferring the objects she had assembled in her studio to the gallery space, “so that it is easier for the person to connect to the image.”
As a result, her assemblages of plexiglass, fabric and other objects selected for their physical qualities become illusory environments, where forms echo and resonate associatively. Using mirrors as “another window in the picture”, she arranges and rearranges the ephemera in her studio, creating increasingly complex psychological spaces.
Her occasional representation within these webs of meaning, and her interest in the effect of representing the author’s body as a presence within the work, owe something to her interest in artists’ studios – specifically those of the American abstract impressionist Helen Frankenthaler and German sculptor Eva Hesse. Since moving from Amsterdam to Berlin for her residency at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in April 2010, the paintings which previously were one fragment of the installations, are now what she is working on as pieces in their own right. Regardless of the final medium, Franck’s process is distinct – the clashing of everyday materials, from spraypaint to Hula Hoops, to produce “unclear dramatic worlds” filled with relational forms, textures and surfaces.
Text by Susanna Davies-Crook