Aundrea Frahm: It’s the Fire that Creates, Not Destroys

Aundrea Frahm, It’s the Fire that Creates, Not Destroys
at Test Site Projects through November 21st, 2021

by D.K. Sole

It’s The Fire that Creates, Not Destroys is a small exhibition, smaller than the already-small space, smaller than the last exhibition that was in here, a group show of interesting works curated by Kristin Hough. The exhibition text talks about magical fecundity: some trees regrow vigorously after they have been burnt. “The title for this exhibition was derived from a plaque in the great redwood forest. Being surrounded by the ancient trees Frahm was puzzled and inspired by the idea that the fire could be seen as creation not destruction. . .This exhibition is inspired by the concepts that heat, pressure, and decay are needed to cause growth, transformation, and evolution.”

Her materials fit her thesis. Most of the show consists of drawings, charcoal has been used to make the drawings, and a single burnt stick has been suspended horizontally below a suite of them to drive home the point that this charcoal came from the dead parts of trees. A line of burnt stumps, drawn above an imaginary earth-line with thin spikes (like the shrivelled reflections of the same stumps) extending below (an MRI zig-zag: life!), takes up the long back wall. You can picture her hand rubbing the charcoal up and down on the surface of the wall as she works to conjure up this revival of a forest.

Visually, however, the work is not fecund. It’s pale, black and white, sparse, controlled. Frahm doesn’t depict her awe and she doesn’t ask us to feel it.  Without that awe, what do we have? We have understanding. Like gods, we calmly view the cycle of regrowth as if unfolds sequentially across six sheets of paper. A tree burns, smokes, crumbles, then reappears as a sprout. The miraculous progress is given to us all at once. If there is any risk of confusion then the title, Cyclical, puts an end to it. A cycle? Then it will happen again. The images are small enough to fit in our hands. The stick under the drawings is a solitary stick, not a flourishing ocean of sticks. It lies across two nails, not in contact with the earth that might – if the possibility was there – enable it to regrow and surround us, like its friends in the redwood forest. On the next wall, a black substance listed as “pigmented glue” has been stuck to the wall in hardened loops. These loops are closed just as the cycle next to them is closed, uninterrupted. Maybe she was drawing the flanges of a pine cone. The charcoal mural on the opposite wall moves up and down on its reliable horizon. The charcoal is respectably unmessy. I looked at the floor for dust.

The windows are tinted with orange vinyl. I saw this show in the evening. In the daytime, when the sun is shining through the orange windows, then the space inside will look different and the cold whites will be warm and orange. The drawings of trees will be growing in the fire “seen as creation not destruction.” An unsteadiness. Still, this charcoal had been regenerated not of its own accord or via nature, but under a firm hand. The mural trees have been lifted away from the actual earth on a competent palm. I mentioned the smallness of the exhibition earlier because I was surprised to find myself walking into a vision of cool, clear thought when I was expecting – hoping - to be puzzled by “growth, transformation, and evolution.” Give me the experience she had, when she found herself in that forest (I thought).

It’s the Fire that Creates, Not Destroys
Test Site Projects, 1551 S Commerce St, Unit 1A, Las Vegas, NV 89102
October 1st – November 21st, 2021

Photograph D.K. Sole

Published by Wendy Kveck on November 6, 2021