Featured Artist

Joshua Frankel’s Exposed to everything and attracting everyone

Joshua Frankel is a visual artist, animator, and director who grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, NY. He lives at the Wassaic Project with his wife and artist, Eve Biddle. His current show, One and the same body, at Standard Space, which is run by Theo Coulombe, investigates how we relate to crowds.

The work is about, as Frankel comments, “how we’re drawn to crowds, the pleasure we find losing our individuality within them, the joy and terror they can create, and what these profound effects mean for our conceptions of ourselves.” As someone who grew up in a remote place, I have often had a particular fascination with being engulfed or alone in crowds.

Through animated drawings and unique woodblocks on muslin works in the main gallery, one wanders through multiple crowd scenes, contemplating one’s place; throughout this installation, bodies seem held in suspension.

Entering the back gallery is the new extended video of Frankel’s Within the Crowd There is a Quality. This film was initially presented at Moynihan Train Hall, New York City, in 2023. One is sensorially plunged into the animated images and conversation of people and crowd milling, yet you alone are the voyeur, people watching.

Following this cluster of bodies, the viewer is also introduced to Before they can find the words for it, another Frankel film regarding a midden, a further conversation regarding our influence on place.

Still Images courtesy of Standard Space and Joshua Frankel. One and the same body will be exhibited at Standard Space, located at 147 Main Street, Sharon, CT, until August 18th. To contact Standard Space and visit by appointment, you can call (917) 627-3261 or email info@standardspace.net. 

Barbara London, curator, writer, and founder of the video program at MoMA was in conversation with Joshua Frankel on August 3rd at Standard Space.