Adrian Frost

The Eternal Return of Adrian Frost

Adrian Frost is a sculptor, installation artist, performance/recording artist,
poet/filmmaker, and writer born in Cornwall, England and residing in Eureka Springs,
AK. A powerful, compassionate and inspiring personality, Adrian creates an immersive
environment around himself that demands audience participation: there is no such thing
as a passive observer in Frost's world. This participation can be merely positional by
inviting the viewer to step over a pile of mulch cushioning a block of driftwood or
recoiling from the jagged edges of broken glass. At first, one is struck by the arte povera
qualities: chipped plexiglass, broken planks, plate glass "mended" by masking tape, and
sharp-edged corrugated metal, but on closer examination, the work is well-crafted,
deliberate and secure. The appearance of fragility is purely deceptive, as the strength of
the artist's message emerges in his paintings. Adrian Frost’s mark making combats
space while forging not so much letters but emphatic forms that individually embody the
power of the entire word. Painted phrases such as: "improvised explosive device" or
"have a nice day" invoke a new meaning when the space of each painted character is
fought for with the power of a passionate brush.
In his sculptures, Adrian Frost chisels cryptic poems into weathered wood. A long bench
states: "those who know speak not, those who speak, know not" and the interiors of the
hewn letters are painstakingly lined in sterling silver leaf. The installation of this piece,
like many others, will shift depending on context and environment. Sometimes, Adrian
has exhibited "those who know..." as an upright bench, other times it has been shown
face down, barely legible save by looking at a mirror placed underneath and partially
obscured by coarse rock salt. Other artworks can be buried in dirt, shielded behind
broken glass or mounted ladder-like onto a wall inviting ascension.
However, Adrian Frost’s artwork reaches another dimension entirely when activated by
the artist’s performative presence. In the past decade, film has become increasingly
important to Frost, serving to document and approximate the artist’s interaction with his
art as well as to manifest ghosts and mythological spirits embodied by other actors.
Frost, as a poet, resonates with the historical Homer as he retells a tale of eternal
return. In his film, Lysistrata, recently featured at the 2018 International Video Poetry
Festival in Athens, Greece, Frost creates an intra-dimensional collage of words,
movement and images that evoke fathoms of memory. A broken veteran and
alternatively accepting and rejecting women, flicker in the liminal shadows of the digital
screen. The narrator's British-accented voice calmly describes a traumatized world
seeking to heal its own broken heart. The time of rage and pain is long past, but the
lingering grief propels Frost’s artwork and is at the root of the aching tale he recites

again and again. But the artist’s world is never hopeless as love and passion provide
the weaponry with which the artist/poet combats fate with a defiant power challenging
the fickle gods and the finality of death.
Adrian Frost’s shape-shifting performative work combined with his immersive
installations defy any documentation- photographic or on video. The intensity of a chain
saw hitting metal, showering sparks throughout a transformed venue forcibly hews
meaning from the rock of memory. The rhythmic accompaniment of a mournful
didgeridoo or a driving beatbox is as invigorating as catching sight of a wild animal in
the forest or the quick flash of fire seen from the corner of the eye. The poet merges into
his archetypical art objects, retelling a story by reliving the tale, enrapturing the
audience and entrapping them into the living moment. This ability to activate the viewer,
and for them, in turn, to shed the passive role of onlookers and instead invest in a
mythic journey is what distinguishes Frost’s work from merely performative theater. The
smell of smoke, the artist’s sweat and breath, the pulsating music and the poet's song
combine to make Adrian Frost’s art a bold symphony that is poignantly mourned when
concluded. And yet, like Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cloud, Adrian Frost continually self-
transforms “Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb” to recreate ancient
tales and compel us all to be reborn again.

                                        -- Jen Dragon