This exhibition was on view in downtown St. Catharines for the month of April 2025.
The words of the artist :
The work in this show is intended to ask the question: What if everyone was being honest about how gay their art was during the Renaissance? This, in short, is my artistic point of view and it is a question I love to tackle.
I’m a firm believer that the art world sometimes takes itself way too seriously. We should, as creators and consumers of visual arts, be able to laugh at our work and the world it inhabits and not just observe through a haughty detachment of academic solemnity. I’ve always felt that the disconnect that exists between the average person and the world of fine art lies in this constructed glass wall by which visual art must be judged on how serious it is. Who’s smart enough to “get it”? Who has the foundational awareness to be able to interpret and understand the artist’s vision? We forget that even the dusty verbose works of Shakespeare or the great operas of Mozart are meant to be funny a lot of the time. It’s not all grief stricken protagonists experiencing the worst life can throw at them. We are allowed to be amused by the silly even when it is sprawled on canvas with paint.
Now, I’m not saying I’m not steeped in my own sense of self (honestly if you’ve gotten this far in this statement you’re more than aware of this by now), nor do I throw images together without doing a hefty amount of research. I’m proud of my academic achievements, my intellectual pursuits, and my love of both historic and contemporary culture, but when it comes to my relationship with the viewer it’s not my goal to lead them with a carrot on a string to seeing my point of view but instead to give them a glimpse of a camp infested world in which anything is possible. My personal experiences are mine and I will continue to litter my work with the trivial little bits and pieces that I find personally amusing, but art needs to breathe and live and glitter with a light that can penetrate anyone’s psyche. I want my viewers to see what I have created and find the elements of it that can bring an individual joy to their lives.I just want art to be fun.
More of Ian Franks’ artwork can be seen on here.