L.A. Artist Frances Stark Celebrates Art and Language at Hammer Exhibit

Sandra Miska

In her 24-year career, Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist Frances Stark has mastered multiple mediums.  “Uh-Oh: Frances Stark 1991-2015,” another exciting event at the Hammer Museum, is the most comprehensive mid-career survey of the artist to date, featuring 125 drawings, collages, paintings and video installations.

Born in Newport Beach in 1967, Stark is now a key figure in the Los Angeles art community.  Her work has been on display all over the United States as well as abroad in cities such as London, Glasgow, Düsseldorf and Moscow. She holds an M.F.A. from Art Center College and Design in Pasadena and a B.A. in humanities from San Francisco State University.

“Uh-Oh” will cover Stark’s entire career and includes everything from early carbon drawings to intricate collages, plus mixed-media paintings and more recent work that infuses digital technology, such as PowerPoint slides. Her work centers on the use and meaning of language.

“For more than two decades she has been making poetic and poignant compositions combining text and imagery, exploring a wide variety of subjects, including writing, procrastination, the banality of life, failure, success, pride, self-doubt, motherhood, pedagogy, institutional critique, class, music, literature, poetry, philosophy, art, sadness and relationships,” says the Hammer.

Sentences written by classic writers pop up in Stark’s works, including Emily Dickinson, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett. Stark is also a published writer.

“Uh-Oh: Frances Stark 1991-2015” opens at the Hammer Museum on Oct. 11, 2015 and will be on view until Jan. 24, 2016.