Biography

Frans Frengen as a schoolboy could stand for hours admiring landscape painters in the wild (nature was, incidentally, one of his passions). As a schoolchild, he became obsessed with everyone who made art. He was fascinated to make art himself. It was only during his time at the academy that he realized creating art was wonderful. Every student of the academy was a friend, a real friend. There he found his delight: Art was, and always had to be, unique.

Thus began a quest: it would never stop. Later, the word 'Contemporary' appealed to him less because it lasted for so many years (perhaps that was the intention). But in the back of his mind, the computer was killing his brain cells. Frans feared that someday - didn't know what, tried to predict it - something would come along, it would leave everyone behind, something that no longer needed an artist's hand - the use of computer codes (call it AI) was intrinsically frightening.

His entire life's purpose consisted of creating uniqueness. He works hard, searched, gave free rein to his feelings, until he discovered fumagine. Fumagine, he chose the name without knowing that it was a deadly, almost incurable plant disease (a human disease) characterized by soot deposits on the leaves. No one could copy this fumagine - painting with fire in this manner - nor to photograph it as it was supposed to be done.

You could recognize his fumagine everywhere. The thick lines, the carefully orchestrated technique. He could go in any direction with it. It became Frans Frengen. He pursued it resolutely. His entire life was woven into it, even though it was dangerous for his lungs.

He called it paintings sculpture, because of its almost invisible thickness. He was, in fact, a sculptor and therefore had to turn his sculptures into paintings. Thus, he sculpted as painting, using patches of paint. Equally unique.

If his sculptures were soot, he could add patches of color to them. Frengen was born into the art of drawing, painting, and sculpture. It would dominate his feelings: being Frans Frengen.

Artist Statement

Fumagine is to paint with a flame, a sculpture of soot, an installation of smoke. It's no more or no less. Begun in 1976, Belgium was only with this "figurative" technique that probably would have been no goal without a crosspass from Yves Klein who created Art with fire. Only later Frans learned also know the other three masters of the quartet from the zero period, Aubertin, Peeters and especially Otto Piene - his biggest idol. He painted on his way, with his feelings but in this manner with fire.

Frans Frengen has his noted fumagine - blue recovered in his experiments; it was precisely a blue like the other blue from his predecessor Yves Klein; associated as a complementary color to the color of soot so that he sees the possibility of being on a beach, walk a tide line of grains to approach Contemporary art with the light in and on the soot that is recognized universally in each exhibition space and even in the universe by creating.

In soot collected, Frengen, sees elements of figuration that are extremely varied. It's like an author he paints, draws and sculpts simultaneously, poetic, contemporary, recognizable, breathtaking shades with soot, sculpting with stains and holes. He adds some colors, some moveable squares for interaction and also some DNA. "Let me say that I preach "The Praise of Folly" by Erasmus," are the words of Frengen.

By looking at the compact images of the subconscious Frans sees images with a new view of reality. It is by reproducing what he sees and feels that he can create fair and ambiguous images. Frengen is aware that everyone does not see the same. More and more he began to doubt. That's why he wants to create a new view. To look different. Indeed, to paint the visible and invisible, described by an international master in the art history.

"More intense and broader than what I can afford," said Frans, "Moving under the work gives me freedom, I feel myself as a partner of the painting. I can walk around and react from all positions, from the four winds, millimeter by millimeter. I do not need to step on the canvas thanks to action painting and painting the vaults of the Sistine Chapel. And even as the master of cubism it is a feast to be undisturbed at the edge of the abyss of falsehood.

I'll make the opposite of dripping colors, the opposite of abstract (that does not exist in this sense according to the master of cubism). It is like to search the opposite with or without an ear."

Some quotes of Frans Frengen:

"The only advantage of contemporary art is that they do not have to show what contemporary art was."

"I have hated art to kill for all she did to me, but each time I love her as much for all she is."
"Memory lives, but you were too late to collect her."
"I am the puppet of my subconscious, but I decide about the strings."
"Art is like you unbend, a shot in the bull's eye." (ATIM Magazine: "TOP 60 MASTERS OF CONTEMPORARY ART")

To say it shortly:

Fumagine is a painting with a flame - not scratching in soot to an universal image - about a confused world, like philosophers always said. As a child, every picture was a picture but after all multimedia experience it is still the same. I paint as an author, integrate color, painting with layers of soot or sculpt and paint with holes. I add colors, movable squares and ask the visitor for engagement through interaction. Discovered by coincidence, I called my technique "fumagine". Not knowing what the dictionary said: "A plant disease with soot deposition on the leaves," since I know I can tell all about my work in eight words.

That I take a bath in reality and the dream landscape with mystery and comedy to a perception without a sermon. People does even not need to know that I think hyperrealistic - scientific, almost mathematical - and so intensely work with fire with construction and deconstruction, nature and manipulation, joys and sorrows of innocence and prohibition of light and shadow, fantasy and fear; a painting of opposites with or without an ear.

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Frans Frengen

Ivan Sizonenko

Magnus Borg