Shingo Francis

To See the Light

2020

Shingo Francis grew up in Los Angeles, immersed in the intense light and vast ocean vistas of life in southern California. Like many LA artists, Francis became fascinated with the ever-changing qualities of light and how it affected one’s perception and experience of the world. As the son of painter Sam Francis, Shingo also happened to grow up in the heart of LA’s nascent artworld, where artists such as Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Craig Kaufman and Peter Alexander were utilizing new materials to explore the phenomenology of how we perceive. These pursuits became loosely known as California’s Light and Space movement and for many of them, their artwork was as much a catalyst for exploring perception as it was an art object unto itself. Francis has continued this pursuit with a series of gossamer-like paintings with colors that appear in constant flux, changing as one moves about them. Utilizing interference paints – a medium of crushed, titanium-coated mica that refracts light - the colors in these pieces shimmer and shift depending on the angle of the viewer and the reflection of light. Rectangular shapes conform to the shape of the canvas, creating a framework of change as viewers move. What one sees becomes inherently tied to their particular perspective and the character of the light at any given time. The necessity of the viewer’s presence and engagement with the seeing and experiencing of the “work”, is a driving interest for Francis. He intends these paintings to counter the notion that the virtual reproductions of artwork on our phones, tablets and screens can replace, or even approximate, the actual physical and emotional experience of being “present” with a work of art. Shingo Francis has been the subject of numerous national and international exhibitions. He was awarded the Fumio Nanjo Award from the Mori Museum in Tokyo and is in numerous museum and institutional collections, including The Frederick R. Weisman Foundation in Los Angeles. Francis received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Pitzer College in Claremont and a Master of Arts degree from ArtCenter College of Design, in Pasadena, California.