Reviews - Comments

'Echo' - 2009 Satellite Gallery - NZ Herald Review

It's a clever artist who can draw you in

Atmospheric, often surprising works give much food for thought and invite closer inspection

This is a week of very approachable art. The Satellite Gallery is showing more than 40 small untitled paintings by Tina Frantzen. Each one reveals a Rembrandtesque darkness in which a dim figure moves. These are Romantic; they wear long full dresses or armour. Sometimes they can barely be perceived at all when the light source is hidden. They nevertheless set the imagination working because they evoke old ballads and legends. Vivid touches of red are part of their energy. They are painted with a skilled, rich, painterly flourish. This is evident when the little mysterious image also includes a heavy curtain when, with no more than a flourish of subdued colour, the painter suggests a thick brocaded material. The paintings make no great claims but we can hear the swish of skirts and a sense of ghostly presence.

All of these shows are quiet. They don't go in for grandeur or savagery or the latest thing from overseas. They are challenging since they set the imagination at work and they do have that eminently approachable quality of delight.

Full review can be found here: www.nzherald.co.nz

T J McNamara
NZ Herald

28/11/2009

'Echo' - 2009 Satellite Gallery

Tina Frantzen's latest works are intimate, elusive, subtle and emotive; you can't help but embark on odysseys of your own in the hints of strange corridors and courtyards. Their intrigue is delightful and it remains the artist's intention that you find in them what you will. There is a wealth of mystery to be found in Tina's work; the figures appearing in 'Echo' glow in their own right, forming their own sense of atmosphere. We are left searching for something in the dark corners, seeing only the glimmer of an ornate robe, or the feathery head-dress of some elusive warrior.

Shelley Hargis
Satellite Gallery Director

'Enter' - 2008 Satellite Gallery

Tina's emotive new exhibition Enter is the latest in a long series of works that employ entrances and passageways as a means of expressing absence, loss, hope and the unknown. Employing repetition and installation style presentation she intensifies her imagery and themes both on and off the canvas. Her meditations become both philosophical and deeply personal, offered in rich layers of expressive paintwork.

Shelley Hargis
Satellite Gallery Director