In their own way, Dale Frank (Australia), AES+F (Russia), Andy Wauman (Belgium) and Yuichi Sugai (Japan) express and discuss the notion of transition, of metamorphosis and of key life changing points through their paintings, video, photography, neon and metal works.

Dale Frank's abstract paintings express the moment of the metamorphosis. This transition state where we move from one form to another. Using varnishes, Frank provokes beautiful chemical emulsions and capture the moment of the metamorphosis on the canvas. AES+F's Allegoria Sacra video and photography series is set in a fantasy airport that becomes a modern world Purgatory (within AES+F's Liminal Space Trilogy). A transition place where people from different countries, cultures or walk of lives meet, mix and connect. A transition place that also symbolizes, for many people, the moment when their existence changed, leaving momentarily or permanently a reality to fly to a new one. Andy Wauman questions, with cryptic works on neon, metal or canvas, the complaisance with which some people have abandoned their early dreams, goals or utopias to move into a vegetative state, into a standardized life. Wauman provokes a reflection on the moment when these persons (us maybe) moved from a combative state into a passive life. Yuichi Sugai's mixed media paintings reflect on his post war Japan childhood. The time when, as a child, he was fascinated by the American influence while his parents and his country as a whole were hanging on traditions and coped with the humiliation of the defeat. With a high sense of nostalgia Sugai analyzes growing up in that Japan and how his generation lived in this transition times.

-Art Statements

Image: © Dale Frank
Courtesy of the artist and Art Statements