Frank Hyder: Janis Journey

About

Denise Bibro Fine Art, Chelsea, NYC is pleased to announce, Janis Journey, November 15 – December 15, 2018, comprised of watercolors, acrylics and bronze work of Pennsylvania artist, Frank Hyder.

The human face has been a primary focus of much of Hyder’s past and present work. Hyder assimilates and re-purposes materials as part of his process. He continually finds meaning and emotional content by exploring materials and working through process as his modus operandi to create his work.

His extensive travel and interest in native cultures in South America, South Pacific, French Polynesia, and Easter Island have inspired his pictorial language. Roman mythological is where the concept of Janis’s Journey comes from.

The work featured are a natural developmental progression of ideas that come from his monumental inflatables work that comprised Giants in The City, an installation he was asked to install at Basel Miami. By developing these forms, he has found a new voice. The concept of Janis has impacted his story and design. In Hyder’s voice, Janis has two heads and is referred to as “is” not “us” to be gender neutral. Janis is the Roman god of gates of new beginnings. In the Giants in The City, Janis became an inflatables sculpture- a 3D painting ready to move if wanted.

After a serious accident that confined him in a wheelchair for nine months, Hyder still continued his journey with his “Janis Project” exploring and expanding the “Janis” concept to the world of watercolor and smaller sculpture. This exhibition focuses on this body of mature work. The fantastical mythological imagery of the inflatable is the fodder of these current body of works…continuing this theme of new beginnings…. discovery and self-exploration.

Hyder has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the Americas, Asia and Europe; including 10 individual exhibitions in New York. He has had solo museum exhibitions in Venezuela at the Museum of Modern Art Caracas, Museo Jacobo Borges, Museum of Modern Art Zulia, Museo Universidad de Los Andes and Museum of Modern Art Coro, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Carnegie Museum CA, La Salle Museum of Art, National Museum of Catholic Art and History and Noyes Museum. He had a six-month exhibition in the Philadelphia Airport. He is among 80 artists selected as part of an exhibit of graduates of the Maryland Institute College of Art showcasing 160 years of artists. He most recently showed his Janis Project at the Museum of the Pennsylvania Academy of Art and the Art Students League of New York City.

He has a BFA from The Maryland Institute College of Art, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and received an MFA from The University of Pennsylvania. His collections include The Library of Congress, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Grand Rapids Museum of Art, Woodmere Museum, La Salle Museum, James Michener Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Caracas, Museum Jacobo Borges, Caracas, and Museum of Contemporary Art Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela.

He has received major awards including the National Endowment grant in experimental prints, Senior Fulbright Research Grant to Venezuela, U.S. Embassy Cultural Grants, MidAtlantic NEA, Pennsylvania State Council of the Arts Grants and an International Art Programming Network Partners Grant (Bolivia, Peru, Turkey). His public commissions include; City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program “Hanging Garden of I-95” wall mural; Terminal Freezer, Oxnard, CA, ceramic wall mural; and the Museo Jacobo Borges “Bridge of Life” ceramic walkway in Caracas, Venezuela.

There will be an opening reception Thursday, November 15, 2018 from 6-8 PM. The artist will be there.