FRANKO B

In this piece, naked, covered in white body paint, Franko walks down a long canvas aisle. He is lit up on either side from the floor by florescent tubes, and bleeds from calendulas in his arms that hold his veins open as he slowly and ceremoniously walks the length of the canvas towards a bank of photographers at its base. Blood pools at his feet at each end of the “catwalk,” where he stands before turning around and beginning his march again. The performance is structured to resemble a fashion show, and the blood splattered canvas Franko leaves in his wake is used to make unwearable, or at least, un-marketable haute-couture, to mummify household objects, and to make pocket-sized souvenir paintings. The experience of witnessing this performance was riddled with the questions you might expect: You couldn’t help but think – should we be doing this? Is he o.k.? What are the ethics of participating in this event? I had seen photographs of his work and expected to be shocked, anxious, and perhaps even repulsed. In other words, I expected that this work would provoke a visceral response — in part because I know the artist, and because the experience of witnessing this sort of body art was at the time fairly new to me. But also because the photographs of his work boil his performances down to stark images of his wounded body – encounters with Franko’s body in the context of the performances themselves are challenging, but not for reasons one might think.

Ultimately, what matters is how these two works provoke us to scrutinize the image, looking for signs of sincerity – in doing so, they court our attention and force us to draw near. That ambiguity is the very thing that seduces us – in our hearts we hold onto the possibility that someone might be crying for us. (“I miss you.”) This is what is disturbing about Franko B’s performance – not that he bleeds, but that in doing so he crosses a boundary, and carries us with him as he does so. He shifts questions about art and emotion to the audience, moving away from the self-reflexive representation of the artist’s emotional state, to the production of feelings themselves – a risky move if ever there was one, if only because he asks us directly if, and how, we plan to love him back. - Jennifer Doyle

Franko B - 'I'm essentially a painter who also works in performance. I come from a visual art background and not 'live art' or theatre, and this is very important to me as it informs the way my work is read. In the last 20 years or so I have developed ways of working to suit my need at that particular time, in terms of strategy and context, by using painting, installation, sculpture, video and sound.'

Franko B performance from Tim Ashton on Vimeo.

Franko B is best known for his live performances, which he began to make in the mid-nineties. He has described these acts as focusing on the visceral “where the body is a canvas and an unmediated site for representation of the sacred, the beautiful, the untouchable, the unspeakable and for the pain, the love, the hate, the loss, the power and the fears of the human condition.” In Franko B’s performances, he uses his own body as a site for the expressive representation of the visceral acts catalogued above. He exposes his own need and vulnerability in a starkly exposed manner that usually incorporates his physical nakedness, and the controlled shedding of his own blood. - David Thorp

Franko B's performance art is so similar to Bruce Nauman, both using themselves as the subject of performance, expressing their passions and beliefs through shocking and interesting work. Franko B's work is so incredibly personal, he exposes himself and his vulnerable qualities in an honest way. I love his use of paint to create himself as a canvas, this could be interesting to use in my own work combining with the water. Like the ideas I had before about having coloured water to see if the reaction is different.