NYAB Event - Becky Franco “Chosen”

Becky Franco “Chosen”

Soho20 Chelsea Gallery

This event has ended.

Painting directly from her home environment Franco’s carefully staged inventory of shimmering crystal chandeliers, Venetian mirrors, exquisite vases, and personal art collection exposes a private relationship that examines the construction of identity. Franco’s subjects are objects of desire. They represent a comfortable lifestyle that speaks of wealth, class and social status. Through the lens of painting one can reflect on the object-ness of these domestic items and the desire they manifest in individuals and society to achieve. One can also sense the deep felt absence of human presence in the paintings. In Clarity (2009) a tightly cropped view of an ornate dining room is presented to the viewer, the chair tucked in to the clear glass table, and a reflection of perhaps a backyard through the mirror. Each painting offers the sensation of wandering through Franco’s home alone.

Franco’s paintings investigate the possibility of ‘objects’ having the power of choosing us to be acquired and ultimately urging and mesmerizing her to be represented. The objects found in her paintings seem to have ‘CHOSEN’ the artist and have acquired an anthropomorphic presence as if watching us thus exposing to the viewer her subconscious.
Becky Franco was born in Havana, Cuba. She completed a BFA with Honors from Pratt Institute, and an MFA from Queens College, NY. Influenced by the Photo Realist movement of the 1970’s she became the first female billboard artist to join the Sign & Pictorial Display Union. Her paintings were featured in many publications and a Rizzoli book called ‘Tromp L’Oeil At Home’ by Karen Chambers. Rebecca’s paintings have been exhibited in a number of group exhibitions in New York and was recently interviewed by the New York Times for a show exhibiting Caribbean artists at the Islip Art Museum called LA PLACITA, Most recently Franco has been invited to participate in La Bienal at El Museo Del Barrio in June of 2013.