February 11, 2003 Brisbane Courier Mail Stumble Then Rise on Some Awkward Morning Review Rachel Langford

"Now your face is made up of fantasies, the ideal you cripples my heart . . ." reads the catalogue to Ben Frost's current exhibition, a concise collection of monochromatic paintings that lament and romantacise the nature of memory and its distortions. Rising on the national art scene, and honoured with a place in last year's Primavera exhibition of emerging artists in Sydney, Frost is back for a hometown show, before deserting us again for Melbourne. As subject matter for his carefully crafted images, Frost steals from the popular culture imagery of fashion photography and its close relation, soft porn.  The art viewer is paingully aware they are meant to be voyeur, and are invited into each model's "unreality". Frost reduces these photographs to their tonal contours via computer, but ironically removes the "artwork for dummies" quality of computer generated images by meticulously painting each image's planes of flat colour by hand. The paintings are hung especially close to the ceiling, meaning you have to stand on tip-toe to get a closer look.  Perhaps this references memories that are untouchable and out of reach, much like the female form as fetish. Interestingly, one individual work is hung seperately from the others, and barely above floor level.  It is untitled, and instead of paint, each contour is cut out of coloured paper and glued one layer upon the next.  Perhaps its low altitude suggests that the distortions of memory are despicable and can be overcome.  A lack of title, therefore narrative, means the drama of imagination is replaced by controllable reason.  Or conversely, a new unknown mystery is on the horizon.  Are you a pessimist or an optimist?