DENISE RUDOLF FRANK

Press Release

Pablo’s Birthday is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of the Austrian painter Denise Rudolf Frank in the United States. The exhibition showcases recent work created by the artist during 2020.

The process of painting mimics the emotional explosiveness of Denise Rudolf Frank’s work: the canvas sits on the floor, as the artist applies color directly from the bottle, working as a direct catalysator, onto it. Through that, the works get loaded with energy, whether good or bad, just like an explosion, without guidance. As the painting dries, it gets turned up, and the contents of her emotions are exposed, and Frank tries to expand the basis from there.
(Ecker Berthold, museum curator and art critic).

Denise Rudolf Frank’s paintings combine diverse elements from her childhood with humorous distorted experiences. The artist moves from abstraction to representational figures, embracing a distinctive impasto technique, fierceful color, and expressive movement. Imaginary figures and creatures from the subconscious coexist with a reflection of her state of mind, allowing the canvas to become an emotional diary. Some references to her visual arts studies in Vienna can be found in her paintings —with a strong, offensively used color scheme— and London, where her paintings became increasingly calm and at ease, in line with the ‘Naïve movement’ observed at English art academies.

Her artistic origins ultimately lie in art therapy. The creative process of painting was integrated into her everyday routine at a very early age, and painting for her became like writing a living diary.

Denise Rudolf Frank, born in 1993 in Vienna, studied Fine Art at Central St. Martin’s College in London and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Rudolf Frank has been exhibited nationally and internationally in major cities such as Tokyo, Seoul, London, Salzburg, and Vienna, since the age of 23. Among these, the work of the artist has been presented in solo and group exhibitions, including NBB Gallery, Berlin (2021), Kunstverein Mistelbach (2020), Galerie Clemens Gunzer, Salzburg (2020), Museumsquartier, Vienna (2020), and The Peanut Factory, London (2019). This exhibition at Pablo’s Birthday will be her fourteenth solo show since 2016.