Art of Mo’ Wax: Phil Frost
Part of the appeal of a Mo’ Wax release, other than the music, is their amazing artwork, and the label became famous for their visually appealing packaging. This series will take a a brief look at some of the artists who worked with Mo’ Wax between 1992–2003.
Phil Frost is an artist from New York who began exhibiting his work in the 1990s, and has long been associated with DJ Shadow and Mo’ Wax thanks to one album cover featuring his distinctive art style.
Born in 1973 in Jamestown, New York, Phil Frost first became interested in art during the 1980s. While skateboarding in Brooklyn, he became inspired by the graffiti around him and took up tagging, before he moved to wheat pasting and installing his artwork around the city streets, as he explained in 2015:
I would find some sort of weird industrial thing coming out of a building or some sort of utilitarian piping, or venting boxes coming off a building. I would measure off the different panels and cut the measured panels out of brown butcher paper. Then I would draw with ink and paint paintings on those paper panels. I would figure out the best option for pulling it off, like a particular night or if even in broad daylight and then I would go and wheat paste them onto those things to create some type of painting sculpture sort of work in the street and feel that pulsing inner rush type of inspiration from it.
These works began to get noticed and Frost was profiled in an episode of City Arts that aired on PBS New York, and he soon began to appear in galleries.
Phil Frost’s first exhibition was at Aaron Rose’s Alleged Gallery in 1994 as part of the Pathetic-Masterworks group show. This was followed in 1995 by Dysfunctional, held at the Blue Note in London, featuring work by Mike Mills, Mark Gonzalez, Tommy Guerrero, and Thomas Campbell, alongside Frost.
The Dysfunctional exhibition was curated by Rose and sponsored by Mo’ Wax, Gimme Five, and Slam City Skates. The exhibition was then taken on tour when Mo’ Wax visited Australia, and in 1996 Frost returned to London to paint a mural for Slam City Skates, and also visited the Edinburgh Film Festival to exhibit his work as part of a Mo’ Wax curated program Sampled Visuals.
Screening at the festival was Standpipe Siamese & The Adventures of Frost, a documentary about Phil Frost directed by Alex Rappoport which followed Frost around Manhattan as he worked on his painting.
By 1997, Frost had his first solo show at the Exquisite Corpse Artsite in Vermont, and his first artwork for Mo’ Wax appeared on DJ Shadow’s Preemptive Strike compilation at the beginning of 1998.
The artwork features Frost’s unique style, which The New York Times once called “Intriguing neo-primitive figures”. Frost described the figures himself in the 1999 book Scrawl : Dirty Graphics and Strange Characters, explaining, “The figures I paint aren’t completely human but I don’t know where they’re from.”
Apart from some merchandise for the DJ Shadow release, this was his first and final artwork on Mo’ Wax, but he has designed some other covers for DJ Shadow since Mo’ Wax closed in the early 2000s.
Shadow’s Diminishing Returns in 2003 featured some coasters designed by Phil Frost, and in 2010 Shadow released Def Surrounds Us which featured different artwork by various artists, including Phil Frost.
Outside of a few other album artwork projects, Frost has taken part in a series of collaborations with brands, such as a shoe for DC in 2003, as well as work for Absolut Vodka, BE@RBRICK, and skate decks for Shut Skate NY.
In 2008 his first book was released by Damiani, collecting his work from 1991–2003, and showing his development from street artist to his more recent installations for galleries.
Currently, Phil Frost is said to be living and working on the Gulf Coast of Florida, after spending most of his life in New York. He has continued to exhibit his paintings around the world, from New York to Madrid and Dubai.
External Links
Phil Frost at Galeria Javier Lopez & Fer Frances — includes CV
