Frankie Martin: Live From the Bermuda Triangle

Intermedia artist Frankie Martin, who works with video, sculpture, craft and music, describes her work as “an intersection of culture, fantasy, craft, magic and color.”

She combines ’80s-inspired geometric patterns and bright, fluorescent colors with influences from ultra-fast rave subculture and contemporary graphic imagery.

Martin’s Storm of Life, her first show at Locust Projects, revisits two of her older videos. In Weather, she performs a mock weather report during a storm; Live From the Bermuda Triangle features her lying on a beach, tracing a triangle in the sand with a rock.

Blue triangles and the artist’s screeching mouth of perfect teeth are overlaid into the videos, which are accompanied by an installation of three neon-pink paper triangles on the gallery floor. Triangles are ubiquitous in Martin’s work and refer to the Bermuda Triangle as a metaphor for dangerous geometry and the tendency to feel lost in life.

The installation opening culminated with a live performance of Martin’s infamous Freakout. If you’ve seen one of Martin’s performances, you’ve basically seen them all. This time, she emerged, scantily clad, from a pink paper triangle — shrieking at the top of her lungs and krumping to a reggaeton-inspired techno mix. As the music peaked, Martin humped the paper triangles, the audience and the gallery floor — all the while, incoherently yelling and cursing.

She sang the words to a song called “Esto es lo que tú quieres (This is What You Want),” arranged by her aptly named band, Freakout. The lyrics include maxims like “I am a rock, no better yet, a pyramid, of solid gold … freak is mi nombre, scream my name … twist my hips, my dance will make you loco.”

After a fan doused Martin with a big bucket of water, the freakout activity intensified until the artist collapsed in an exhausted heap on the wet gallery floor.

Her freakouts draw a crowd — they exacerbate urban stereotypes, but they fail to generate a quality art experience. Her fantasy rave art is very internalized, self-centered and sexual, almost to the point of objectification. Her intention is to simultaneously mock and enjoy the stereotypical modern-day pop star. Martin envisions herself a self-made pop phenomenon — an alternative for younger generations.

In actuality, she pokes fun at a lower echelon of pop culture in an extremely narcissistic way. Her egocentric energy fails to charge the audience, predominately affecting only the artist and her posse. That’s because Martin’s art aims to create microscopic fantasy worlds — alternate sensations that prove problematic and exclusive.

Martin is in her mid-20s and comes from a close-knit group of experimental filmmakers based in Milwaukee and Philadelphia. The fact that we enjoy looking at her face enables her work to thrive, but it’s a sort that can’t go on forever.

Of course, art doesn’t have to be serious, but it should compel the art audience in some extraordinary manner. Art can supersede everyday kitsch and commotion — but in Martin’s case, her art just adds to the noise. It falls short of satire and is simply annoying.

Despite the obvious parallels, Marina Abramovic’s Freeing the Body, in which Abramovic dances to tribal drumming for six hours before finally collapsing with exhaustion, is in a league that Martin will probably never achieve.

In a 2005 interview, Martin said her art aims to generate a heightened state of happiness. But Storm of Life is too caustic and shallow to succeed. It’s deficient, both visually and conceptually, and belongs within the realm of “Frankie Fever” and her trendy posse.

Her earlier work, as seen in The Moore Space’s 2005 group show Hanging by a Thread, is more compelling and endearing — comprising homemade mobiles and colorful, rainbow-laden collages. Storm of Life is notably less elaborate. The videos showcase poor lighting, rudimentary technology and minimal consideration of composition and presentation. The audio is lacking, too (a barrage of mangled sounds over which the artist’s lyrical manifesto couldn’t be heard). Ironic, given that Martin’s freakout is about vying for attention.

That said, if you buy into the hype, you should feel lucky to witness “Frankie Fever.”

Frankie Martin’s Storm of Life is showing through Oct. 27 at Locust Projects, 105 N.W. 23rd St., Miami; 305-576-8570.