SHINGO FRANCIS

Artist Biography

Shingo Francis (b. 1969, California) is a painter, draftsman and photographer who employs minimal and abstract approaches to his work exploring color, time and expanse. At the age of three Francis moved to Japan with his mother, and attended an international school in Tokyo until the age of thirteen. Upon moving back to California to live with his father during the academic year, Francis would spend his summer and winter breaks in Tokyo. Francis received his BA degree in 1992 from Pitzer College in Claremont, CA, and a MFA in 2017 from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. In 2001, he moved his studio from Los Angeles to Japan where he contemplated and immersed himself in its traditional and popular culture. Francis currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Like his father, the painter Sam Francis, Shingo is interested in form and color, and has a keen appreciation for how these elements shape our perceptions. His acrylic painted canvases often take unusual forms, including long, stretched paraboloids. He breaks the picture plane with horizons of densely worked masses of color. Of those horizons, Francis has said, “What the boundary represents is the interaction, the point between these two entities. It expands not just into culture but it can include personality and psychology, so it became kind of a greater boundary.”

Francis has exhibited his work globally in the United States, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Germany, and Spain. He has been granted several awards and residencies including Fumio Nanjo Award, Deputy Director of Mori Museum, Tokyo, Yokohama University of Art at Koganecho Studio, Japan, BankART Residency, Japan, Marma Berlin Residency, Germany, Governors Island Swing Space, NY, Montalvo Arts Center, Saratoga, CA, and Art Omi International Art Center, Ghent, NY. Francis can be found in public and private collections around the world including Banco de Espana, Ebhard Kornfeld Collection, Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Koichi Ushioda Collection, Mori Building Co., Ltd., Nezu Collection Tokyo, and Shinshindo Kyoto to name a few.