Frankie Rice

Frankie Rice assembles sculptural archways as metaphor and self-portrait. The arch itself is the common denominator, yet the material has differed drastically depending on the external or internal environment he is currently taking into consideration. Kids spring-loaded rocking horses from playgrounds, linked together in a whimsical and slightly creepy narrative suggest a troubling passage or gateway from childhood to adolescence. His driftwood arches are a direct result of his upbringing in Truro MA, which project a torque, sinuous struggle that he has iconoclastically burned in ceremonial settings or kept intact as weathered milestone. When Frankie moved to NYC he utilized materials fundamental to his immediate internal and external dialogue. He left the natural beauty of opaque driftwood representative of his home on Cape Cod and utilized the structure of the trashcan to emote a sense of his reaction to the complexity of the city both agleam and distressed. In November Frankie include one of the most profound sculptures of this series as part of the exhibition "Wrestle". The sculpture, small in comparison, required an entire wall; it spoke volumes. He has taken his past lovers HIV pill bottles and melded them into small, intimate pieces that wreathe danger, sexual tension (ejaculation, caustic and frozen in time) all within an irony of hope. Twisted, burning, wreathing, torqued and weathered, his works metaphoric denominator is always the very evident opportunity of wishfulness through passage.

For Solo, Frankie will be exhibiting his large trashcan sculpture. Gleaming and powerful in its stance, this works mien suggests passage and renewal through the structure of banal material that, in its traditional form, is used to compile and dispose of unnecessary waste. Frankie takes these trashcans and repurposes them in a context that allows us to walk through and ex