Matthew Conradt and Sara Frantz “Polarities of Banality”

The Muriel Guépin Gallery

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Muriel Guépin Gallery presents “Polarities of Banality “, a group show of two artists that utilize suburban imagery in their pieces. Matthew Conradt’s mixed media and photo transfer works investigate the current disarray of the American Dream. By splicing images of suburban America together he effectively shatters that world into pieces, and with it its outdated form of thinking. Sara Frantz on the other hand uses similar imagery, though she is inspired by travel and memories. Frantz builds her own memories from routes travelled by splicing fragments of her journey together. While both Conradt and Frantz use similar motifs, the intentions behind their works remain quite different.

Matthew Conradt forages for images in newspapers and magazines that are both familiar and alien to his experience. Decadent interiors, wood paneling from trailer homes and wide-open, desolate landscapes become portents and signifiers of the substantial socio-economic and cultural differences that currently exist in the United States. With collages that meld and blend into a dream-like state of America past and present, we see a transition of American culture from within eras and classes mashed up like a palimpsest of conflicted experiences. His work becomes particularly poignant during the current political climate, and the perpetuation of old American ideals. There is a harsh split in American culture currently, which Conradt mimics in his sharply spliced together collages.

Sara Frantz’ s work gives a near-collage effect by picking and choosing images from her travels and drawing them altogether in a made-up reality. She controls her nature and imitates the landscape she remembers in order to emphasize the shifting progression of towns and landscapes on her journeys. Her images are monochromatic, except for small portions in which she paints in Technicolor. This maintains a childlike wonder to her paintings, and also pushes the idea of memory and the finicky nature of remembrance. The parts that glow with color are the parts that glow in her memory banks, as she looks back fondly on her travelling times.