this is a floatation device, this is not a life saving device

"I see what is there, what I have to do beyond definitions of beauty and art. Beyond yourself. You must always go beyond yourself to what you imagine art can be in your time".

–Dale Frank, 2022

In Dale Frank's 35th solo show at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery since 1982, the artist strikes out once again in a quest to answer what art can do and where it can take us. Armed with his repertoire of materials - perspex, pigmented varnish and epoxyglass - he pushes his own limits and ours simultaneously, arriving at the most expansive exploration of these materials we have seen. Within swirls of vivid, fluorescent colour and shimmering, metallic pigments, we are left to ponder the limits of materiality as Frank expertly charters course to places unknown. How far can he go as a painter? How far can he push the medium? Where can he take the viewer? What do we see in his paintings? In these psychedelic voyages, space and time are suspended. In the depths of vast constellations, the artist navigates beyond the limitations of the corporeal, maximising the potential of his medium. This time we disappear into the all-seeing eye of a universe, dive through the centre of a whirlpool, enter the epicentre of galaxies; to end up beyond ourselves, beyond the known, in the boundless space of beauty and art.

– Victoria Scott

Dale Frank’s abstract paintings have been exhibited internationally since the 1980s, showing at PS1, New York (1981), Biennale of Sydney (1982), 42nd Venice Biennale (1983 and 1984). Frank was included in the exhibition Panorama della post - critica: critica ed arte at the Museo Palazzo Lanfranchi in Pisa along with Thomas Lawson and Anselm Kiefer. Recent selected group exhibitions include Unpainting, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2017-18); Dark Heart, curated by Nick Mitzevich, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia (2014); Mix Tape 1980s: Appropriation, Subculture, Critical Style, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013); and Les Arts De L’effervescence Champagne, Musée des Beaux Arts de Reims, France (2013). In 2013, his work was featured in Personal Structures at the Palazzo Bembo as part of the official program of the 55th Venice Biennale. A major solo retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney in 2000. Frank’s work is held in all major Australian state galleries, and a number of regional and university collections. It is also held in international collections, including Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, New Zealand; Musée de Ville de Leige, Leige; Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Zurich Kunsthaus; and a number of corporate collections.

This is Dale Frank's 35th solo exhibition with the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery.