MINNEAPOLIS (Dec 21, 2011) Known for his brash personality and his

inimitable art practice, Frank Gaard has made an indelible mark on the local visual

arts community. Frank Gaard: Poison & Candy, the largest-ever exhibition of

Gaards work, runs from January 26 through May 6, 2012 at the Walker Art Center.

Since the late 1960s, Gaard has forged a deeply personal and idiosyncratic style

that borrows from classic Sunday comics such as Dick Tracy and the Katzenjammer

Kids and the history of Modernism, as embodied in the work of artists Marcel

Duchamp and Piet Mondrian, and philosopher-poets such as Ludwig Wittgenstein,

Friedrich Nietzsche, and Charles Baudelaire. Combining his vibrant, highlysaturated

palette of deep jewel tones, unsullied pastels, and retinal fluorescents

with a profound tendency toward comedic satire on an operatic scale, Gaards

imagery borders on the iconographic. Cartoon-like faces with exaggerated

features populate his paintings, as do crowned and spectacled self-portrait busts,

devils, swans, panties, and ponies. His fantastical, sometimes ribald fetishistic

imagery stems in part from early-childhood traumas and a life lived with bipolar

disorder, a diagnosis that he received in the wake of several breakdowns in the

1970s and 80s.

This survey of some 75 works features monumental tableaux paintings; portraits of

friends, family, and fellow artists from the mid-80s to the present; a suite of new

paintings with a recurring pony motif; an installation of paintings that incorporate

DVDs, CDs, and 78-rpm records; and illustrations from Artpolice, the cult zine

Gaard published from 1974 to 1994. The exhibition will also feature ephemeraincluding drawings, letters, record album covers, and hand-lettered promotional materials Gaard designed for Twin Cities gallery exhibitions and other events.

For more than four decades, Gaard has been an elemental part of the Twin Cities

art scene, revered by many as a mentor and simultaneously scorned by others for

his salacious artistic style. He arrived in 1969 to take a professorship at the

Minneapolis College of Art and Design and later launched his underground zine

Artpolice, which he co-published with several other Twin Cities artists and former

students, and which developed a cult following worldwide. The illustrations in

Artpolice ranged in subject from current events to politics to graphic sex,

presented in a licentious comic strip style but also featuring Gaards signature

brand of intellectualism and social critique. Though Artpolice ceased publication in

1994, Gaards diaristic, no-holds-barred observations and commentary on society

and art continue on his must-read blog (see frankgaard.com).

For nearly 30 years, Gaard has also undertaken a serious study of Jewish mysticism

and the Kabbalah, having converted to Judaism in 1982. His frequent use Hebrew

textual references and the Sephiroth or tree of life as a formal and conceptual

construct in his paintings provided him, in the difficult early years of his mental

illness, with a readymade of sorts that he could use as a compositional device so

that, in his words, he didnt have to keep reinventing the universe over and over.

The exhibition will feature more than 30 works from Gaards ongoing series of

portraits, for which he is arguably best known. His portrait subjects are a whos-who

of the local arts community, past and presentthey include artists Bruce Tapola,

Melba Price, Mary Esch, and Alexa Horochowski; VocalEssence conductor Philip

Brunelle; and writers Emily Carter, Julie Hill, and Neal Karlen, among many others.

The Walker has had a sustained relationship with Gaard since the mid-1970s, when

it began collecting his work (some 20 works from the Walker collection are in this

exhibition). Three major paintings were purchased in 2010, and the following year,

Gaard gifted an important early painting currently on view in the Walker exhibition

Midnight Party. The Walker also presented the exhibition ViewpointsFrank

Gaard: Paintings in 1980.

Gaard was born in Chicago in 1944. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago and

the California College of Arts & Crafts, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts

degree. He has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Bush

Foundation, and the McKnight Foundation. His work has been shown in local,

national, and international exhibitions and is in the permanent collections of the

Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago,

and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Exhibition Curator

Frank Gaard: Poison & Candy is curated by Betsy Carpenter, curator, visual arts at

the Walker Art Center.

Opening-Day Gallery Talk and Reception

January 26, free

6:307:30 pm, gallery talk, Burnet Gallery

7:309 pm. reception, Cargill Lounge

Curator Betsy Carpenters in-depth tour of Frank Gaard: Poison & Candy covers

politics, sex, religion, and other taboo topics. The conversation will continue in the

Cargill Lounge, where the public is invited to toast the artist at a reception.

Mack Lectures are made possible by generous support from Aaron and Carol

Mack.

Gallery Talk: en Gaard

February 9, 6:30 pm, free

Burnet Gallery

Experience Frank Gaard: Poison & Candy from the artists point of view as Gaard

talks about his intellectual and political obsessions, art world references, and

artistic practice.

Press Contact: Christopher James 612.375.7651 christopher.james@walkerart.org

Online Press Room: press.walkerart.org

Twitter: @WalkerArtMedia