Matt Franks

(U.K.) *1970 in Beverley, Yorkshire

Matt Franks is a member of the younger generation of British sculptors who use industrial and everyday materials. In his work, Franks refers to both art history and contemporary everyday culture. “Fooooom!!! 2007“ originates in the images of comics. The simplifying, small-sized drawing of an explosion with a cloud of dust and smoke is translated into a large-sized three-dimensional sculpture. The white surface of the cloud represented in the comic is transformed into the animated surface of the sculpture, with many nuances in terms of light and shadow. Franks thus condenses the two-dimensional cloud from the comic into a formation that is almost Baroque in shape, and whose mass and weight are the absolute opposite of the fleeting object represented. The title of the seemingly abstract sculpture brings to bear the onomatopoeic word from the comic (“Fooooom!!!“) while also alluding to an explosion as the origin of the sculpture.