{"id":23744,"date":"2015-08-18T15:39:27","date_gmt":"2015-08-18T13:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=23744"},"modified":"2015-08-18T15:39:27","modified_gmt":"2015-08-18T13:39:27","slug":"frances-stark-in-chicago-the-digital-private-is-political","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/frances-stark-in-chicago-the-digital-private-is-political\/","title":{"rendered":"Frances Stark in Chicago: Das Digitale Private ist politisch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"size--small\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-23930 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/5_Mark-Woods_20140312_GBE_Stark.jpg\" alt=\"5_Mark-Woods_20140312_GBE_Stark\" width=\"716\" height=\"423\" \/> Frances Stark, installation view of Bobby Jesus\u2019s Alma Mater b\/w Reading the Book of David and\/or Paying Attention Is Free, 2013, courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown&#8217;s enterprise, New York, photography by Mark Woods<\/p>\n<p>In her texts and interviews\u00a0Frances Stark\u00a0often quotes\u00a0the famous 1970s feminist movement rally cry \u2013\u00a0\u201cThe personal is the political\u201d. That is the mantra that drives her work. But what exactly is the political bent that she is angling towards? A thorough survey on Stark\u2019s show entitled &#8220;Intimism&#8221; offers a unique opportunity to unpack her approach.<\/p>\n<p>One would imagine that self-defining as a political artist suggests a sense of radicalism. However, Stark\u2019s choice of creative expression is manifested through internet-related platforms such as conversations in online sex chat rooms in the works like &#8220;Osservate, leggete con me&#8221; (2012) and private images printed from those shared on her Instagram account<em> \u201c<\/em>@therealstarkiller&#8221; (2015), which are decidedly\u00a0the most banal things anybody can do these days. She is lauded for exposing herself in her artwork, although \u2013 different from other contemporaries like Andrea Fraser who made an amateur sex tape of prostituting her body to a collector in 2003 \u2013 Stark\u2019s works are markedly innocuous, despite the allusions to cam sex, daggering and an occasional formal visual reference to female body parts. Rather, her works are humorous, witty, and bitter sweet. She pointedly mixes art history with pop culture and draws inspiration from rappers such as DJ Quick and writers such as David Foster Wallace with his concept of \u201cvideophony\u201d. Her works deal with relationships and domestic environments as seen through the lens of changing technologies, which Stark observes with astute foresight. These technologies are used as tools, not to expose herself, but to expose the language of communication used in contemporary life for connecting people across an alienating digital divide.<\/p>\n<p class=\"size--small\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-23928\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/4_Mark-Woods_20140312_GBE_Stark.jpg\" alt=\"Frances Stark, installation view of Bobby Jesus\u2019s Alma Mater b\/w Reading the Book of David and\/or Paying Attention Is Free, 2013, courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York, photography by Mark Woods\" width=\"716\" height=\"423\" \/> Frances Stark, installation view of Bobby Jesus\u2019s Alma Mater b\/w Reading the Book of David and\/or Paying Attention Is Free, 2013, courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown&#8217;s enterprise, New York, photography by Mark Woods<\/p>\n<p>Other cult artworks included in the exhibition are a series of pre-YouTube, low-fi &#8220;Cat Videos&#8221; (1999-2002), which hinge directly on the recurrent fascination with cat image memes surfacing online today. In a 2007 interview with fellow artist Amy Yao, Stark describes: \u201cThere\u2019s something about living with cats that is very visual, that is so much about observing them, being able to stare at them.\u201d Herein this simple statement, we find the crux of what drives the genius in Stark\u2019s work \u2013 a sensitivity to the visual language of interiority. She is interested in how images can tangibly materialise through matter and how the consumption of culture and images functions and changes in our environments.<\/p>\n<p>Born in 1967, Stark is from a generation that knew had the internet as a remote option and she chose to opt in. There is a considerable lack of cynicism about the manipulation of online communications in Stark\u2019s work, which can be juxtaposed with younger artists like Amalia Ulman (b. 1989) who created a huge following on her <a href=\"https:\/\/instagram.com\/amaliaulman\/?hl=en\">Instagram account<\/a> sharing a personal journey through plastic surgery and self-development, all of which turned out to be a huge scam as a conceptual project.<\/p>\n<p class=\"size--small\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-23932 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/CatVideoFinal.m4v.jpg\" alt=\"CatVideoFinal.m4v\" width=\"716\" height=\"511\" \/> Frances Stark, still frame, this is not exactly a cat video: with David Bowie\u2019s &#8220;Star Man,&#8221; 2006, image courtesy the artist<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Intimism&#8221;\u00a0 &#8211; the title of Stark\u2019s exhibition, hails from a largely unknown early 20<sup>th<\/sup> century art movement in France. Intimists created small paintings and drawings featuring quiet domestic scenes with natural colours distorted to express mood \u2013 similar to the way Instagram and its filters are used today. A principal work in Stark\u2019s survey &#8220;Madame Vallotton and Her Niece, Germain Aghion&#8221; (1899), painted by chief Intimist painter F\u00e9lix Vallotton, was pulled from the Art Institute\u2019s collection and hangs among Stark\u2019s works as a locus for a broader historical understanding, for reading into and sharing personal of imagery.<\/p>\n<p class=\"size--small\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-23896\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Stark_From-therealstarkiller-1298.jpg\" alt=\"Frances Stark, from therealstarkiller #1298, 2015. Courtesy the artist.\" width=\"650\" height=\"650\" \/> Frances Stark, from therealstarkiller #1298, 2015, courtesy the artist<\/p>\n<p>Life-size murals of dejected females holding telephone receivers &#8220;Detumescence and\/or its Opposite (from a Torment of Follies)&#8221; (2012) and oversized black and white images of tin can phones &#8220;Non-Electrical Telephony and\/or Lovers\u2019 Telephone&#8221; (2010) are dispersed throughout the galleries as if the flat, vacuous forms are trying to connect with other humans in the unknown. Across the way hang the series of ten drawings &#8220;Clever\/Stupid Pirouette&#8221; (2014) where the ambigram term is drawn for reading both backwards and forwards above a signpost of arrows leading one to the next but always turning in on itself. To the cynic existentialist, this can be read as a moment of defeat but for those who have faith in honest human connections, it\u2019s a reminder to stop looking elsewhere for intimacy, once the restless pirouettes come to a halt, a security found in intimacy is already there, right where you stand. Perhaps it is in that taboo of revealing her belief in &#8220;faith&#8221; that Stark\u2019s political message can be found.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Text by Arielle Bier<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;Frances Stark: Intimism&#8221; is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago until 30 August, 2015<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mehr: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/showroom\/2015\/08\/body-and-distortion-interview-with-asger-carlsen\/\">Body and Distortion: Interview with Asger Carlsen<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mehr: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/showroom\/2015\/08\/randi-renate-explores-the-nomad-in-berlin\/\">Randi Renate Explores the Nomad in Berlin<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Frances Stark, installation view of Bobby Jesus\u2019s Alma Mater b\/w Reading the Book of David and\/or Paying Attention Is Free, 2013, courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown&#8217;s enterprise, New York, photography by Mark Woods In her texts and interviews\u00a0Frances Stark\u00a0often quotes\u00a0the famous 1970s feminist movement rally cry \u2013\u00a0\u201cThe personal is the political\u201d. That is the&#8230;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11856,139],"tags":[1737,3061,2832,1218,3062,3063,3064,1096,3065,3066,527,3067,3068,994,3069,3070],"class_list":["post-23744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleek-art","category-art","tag-amalia-ulman","tag-amy-yao","tag-arielle-bier","tag-showroom","tag-art-institute-of-chicago","tag-cat-videos","tag-david-foster-wallace","tag-digital-art","tag-dj-quick","tag-felix-vallotton","tag-feminism","tag-frances-stark","tag-instagram","tag-internet","tag-intimism","tag-intimists"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Frances Stark in Chicago: the Digital Private is Political Frances Stark in Chicago: the Digital Private is Political<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/frances-stark-in-chicago-the-digital-private-is-political\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Frances Stark in Chicago: the Digital Private is Political Frances Stark in Chicago: the Digital Private is Political\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Frances Stark, installation view of Bobby Jesus\u2019s Alma Mater b\/w Reading the Book of David and\/or Paying Attention Is Free, 2013, courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown&#8217;s enterprise, New York, photography by Mark Woods In her texts and interviews\u00a0Frances Stark\u00a0often quotes\u00a0the famous 1970s feminist movement rally cry \u2013\u00a0\u201cThe personal is the political\u201d. 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