This publication brings together the work of Cristian Frosi with the human and artistic vicissitudes of other famous dropouts over the last 50 years: from Marcel Duchamp to Agnes Martin, and from Lee Lozano to Charlotte Posenenske.
Christian Frosi was long considered one of the most inspiring and promising Italian artists debuting in the early 2000s. That is until just over ten years into his career, when he decided to make himself unreachable and remove himself from art history, its customs and figures.
This choice brings him abstractly close to Marcel Duchamp, Agnes Martin, Lee Lozano, Charlotte Posenenske and the many other artists before him who decided of their own volition to stop producing art and participating in the art world (sometimes for a few years, sometimes forever). This publication speaks of all of them, with a twofold purpose: on one hand to write the history of Christian Frosi's works and exhibitions—for the first time in an organized and timely manner—and on the other, to relativize the pages left blank through the stories of other "dropout artists," each with their own particular destiny yet united by a common desire to escape.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition La Stanza Vuota [The Empty Room] at GAMeC, Bergamo, in 2022.
Christian Frosi (born 1973) lives and works in Milan. His enigmatic, transitory output is characterized by precariousness, transience and evanescence.
