Anna A. Frants | |
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| Born | 1 October 1965 |
| Occupation(s) | multimedia artist, curator, collector |
| Parent |
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| Awards | Autodesk Planet Studio Award, New York |
| Website | https://annafrants.net |
Anna Frants (Russian: А́нна Алекса́ндровна Фра́нц; born 1 October 1965[1][2] in Leningrad, Soviet Union) is an American multimedia artist, curator, and art collector. She is the founder of nonprofit cultural foundation "St. Petersburg Arts Project" and "CYLAND" MediaArtLab, and is director of "Frants Gallery" (New York, United States).
In 1989, Frants graduated from the St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design (formerly the Vera Mukhina Leningrad Higher School of Art and Industry), where she had majored in Industrial Design. In 1992, she was admitted to the New-York Pratt Institute to the department of Art and Design where she majored in Computer Graphics and Animation.[3]
The mastering of computer graphics and animation marked the beginning of her enthusiasm for new media, new media art and technologies in art[4] and the concentration of her interests on the transition from traditional classical methods to cyberarts that was afforded unlimited possibilities by the rapidly developing internet.
In 1997, she married Leonid Frants. Their son Daniil became the youngest artist at CYLAND MediaArtLab: when he was only twelve, he created, as part of Cyfest, an international educational game program for children, the workshop "Humanizing Robots",[5] which he held in Russia, Germany, Japan, United States and Ukraine.
In addition to continuous exhibition activities as an artist and a curator[6] in New York, St. Petersburg, Europe and Japan, in 2010, Anna traveled to the Polar Region as a member of the international group of artists within the program "The Arctic Circle"[7] organized by the Canadian government. The program's purpose was to afford the artists an opportunity to visit hard-to-reach places of the Polar Region that are mostly known through scientific reports, which would subsequently allow them to create art projects based on their impressions of the region. In addition to the video footage filmed by Anna, that trip resulted in her interactive project Trembling Creatures,[8] exhibited at the group show of participants of those annual expeditions that opened in May 2014 at the "1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery"[9] in New York.
The last two works were made as a result of the trip to the Polar circle as a member of the Canadian art expedition "The Arctic Circle" in 2009.[27] Artworks by Anna Frants are presented by Borey Gallery[28] (St. Petersburg, Russia), Dam Stuhltrager Gallery[29] (New York, United States, and Berlin, Germany) and Barbarian Gallery (Zurich, Switzerland). Her works are in the collections of the New York Museum of Arts and Design, State Russian Museum, Kyosei-no-Sato Museum (Japan), Kolodzei Art Foundation,[30] Sergey Kuryokhin Center for Contemporary Art and in numerous private collections all over the world.
The most notable of Frants' curatorial works were the retrospective exhibitions "Sterligov's Group", 2006, New York, and "Art around the Barracks", 2003, New York.
In the documentary of Andrey Zagdansky "Konstantin and Mouse", dedicated to Konstantin Kuzminsky, one of the episodes was filmed at the opening night of "Art around the Barracks" at Frants Gallery in Soho.
Among contemporary artists, who constantly collaborate with Anna Frants as a curator, are Vitaly Pushnitsky, Elena Gubanova and Ivan Govorkov, Alexander Kozhin, Alexander Terebenin, Marina Koldobskaya, Alexandra Dementieva, Peter Belyi, Petr Shvetsov.[6]
In 2006, Anna Frants together with Колдобская, Марина Дмитриевна|Marina Koldobskaya founded the international media lab "СYLAND".
Since 2007, the MediaArtLab holds the annual festival of cyberart "Cyfest", the largest cyberart festival in Eastern Europe featuring artists from different countries who share an enthusiasm for new technologies.[31][6]
The use of computers allows the artist to break away from the deterministic nature of traditional art forms... Computer art is often similar to conceptual art from the point of view of intellectual judgment: the viewer needs to understand the artist's intentions. This understanding is even more important in interactive projects because the way we react depends on our ability to understand the artist's idea and expectations. The cyberart is challenging because it is based on the technologies and the means that are less intuitive for us and new in their form... Each innovative work gives us a new perspective for understanding the infinitely expanding universe of art and teaches us to understand its creative glossary.
— [32]
In 1999, Anna and Leonid Frants created the nonprofit foundation "St. Petersburg Arts Project"[33] that is still active. Its purpose was the representation in New York[4] of the artists from Leningrad/St. Petersburg who have been working there from the postwar 1950s until the present time.[31] The primary focus was on the so-called Leningrad underground[34] — the unique and underexplored cultural phenomenon of the 1970s and the artistic and social environment that brought if forth.
Gradually, the scope of activities of "Frants Gallery Space" expanded and started including not just the traditional genres, such as painting, sculpture and graphics, but also the art associated with the latest technologies:[33] cyberart, video art, computer animation, interactive installations as well as performance art.
The collection's creation was a natural extension of the development of "St. Petersburg Arts Project". Since 1998, Anna and Leonid Frants have been collecting works of visual arts of Leningrad underground.[31] Their current collection also includes sculptures, assemblages, photographs, videos, objects of actual art and archival materials.
In January 2013, the Department of Contemporary Art at the Hermitage Museum organized, as a part of the project "Actual Art of St. Petersburg, A Retrospective",[35] the exhibition "Simple Rules".[36] It showcased works from Russian and foreign private collections.