The art of Ian Francis mixes the epic and mundane

I stumbled upon some art recently (via the amazing StumbleUpon) that I think deserves some attention. The art I’m talking about was painted by Ian Francis, a 28 year old Englishman. He apparently had the solo show “Super Coma Fantasy” at BLK/MRKT Gallery in Los Angeles, but it ended in early August so if you’re going to go to LA, you’re too late. However, pictures of the art displayed are posted all over the Internet, and, like I said, they’re worth a look.

First, let me give you the only information about Ian Francis’s art I could find. Straight from the equine orifice: “My work is about modern life, particularly television, world events, celebrities, and day-to-day living. It’s about pornography and news reports from the war zones instead of sex and death.” Francis’s work is a mixture of painting, drawing, textures, and photos. Typically there are around 200-300 layers involved.

The thing that strikes me about what Francis just said is how second-hand and voyeuristic of a position he puts man in. Lofty ideals like sex and death seem to be either missing from the world or incapable of being experienced, instead being provided in a distorted way through some form of media. Another agent of distortion that I believe is present in a lot of his work is memory or sensory perceptions. For example, there is a painting of an unconscious, bloodied woman in the arms of a worried man that is titled “Two People From Myspace Play Out High Drama.” This mix of the sort of epic with the mundane is something I think is most interesting in Francis’s work. Another example that I’ll show you here (in admittedly low quality) is “A Girl is Afraid of Her Friend Dressed As Pikachu.” This could be dealing with bigger issues of loyalty and friendship or ontological confusion, but the Pikachu mask and not to mention Scared Girl’s expression make it much more familiar and humorous.

Francis’s use of mixed media complements these ideas. He combines highly abstract, broad, bleeding, static-like colors along with photograph-level details of people, places, and things in a way similar to a memory: certain specifics of the event being completely clear while a lot of the edges and background gets blurred into a residual impression. It’s not exactly clear where one thing ends and another begins.

Reactions to Francis’s art at the BLK/MRKT show seem to be very positive, at least from the few websites I’ve read. All of the paintings are listed on the BLK/MRKT website as sold, with prices ranging from five to twenty thousand dollars, which is even more significant given that this is Francis’s first show in the U.S. But either Francis is too new or just not receiving the critical attention he deserves, because a search of both the LA and New York Times returns no results.

If you want to see more of Ian Francis’s art, check out his website at ifrancis.co.uk. There is still some of his original artwork floating around (non-BLK/MRKT show) that isn’t completely unreasonably priced if you just so happen to like him enough.