Frank Nitsche: A IV–X
Artist's book
Publication date: 2013
Publisher: Galerie Max Hetzler
Binding: Hardcover
Dimensions: 36 x 28.7 x 3.8 cm
Edition of 300
signed and dated by the artist
Condition: Fine
Edition: First Edition
500 pages
Very rare book. Hard to find.
Frank Nitsche
Born in 1964 in Görlitz, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
He studied at the Academy of Dresden at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and has been living and working in the German capital for almost ten years.
The artist has had several exhibitions at the Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Paris, in 2002 and 2006, as well as in 2009 with the exhibition Chloé Top, Versace Pants and in 2012 in the Brussels gallery with Disko.
Nitsche favors a palette alternating acid and pastel colors. His geometric abstractions have their origins in constructivist painting. At first glance, they appear to be flat and polished. However, a closer look reveals a set of drips, stains and pasty touches closer to the American abstraction of Frank Stella and Peter Halley. In these compositions, futuristic forms regularly appear, evoking the artist's passion for speed and industrial design. We also find traces of travel: Egypt, America from where he brings back magazines, photographs...
The paintings of Nitsche are characterized by the collision of angles and surfaces. The contours intersect creating the illusion of a fantastic depth, which more than ever, seems to be fed by architectural sources. Thick surfaces in dominant shades of red and pink are striated by multiple interlocking lines, producing an optical effect similar to the vibrations of a computer graphic. Frank Nitsche elaborates his paintings through an extensive image bank that has been carefully classified for years. By superimposing perspectives, the artist creates an illusion of depth and a tension between abstraction and representation.
Frank Nitsche's work occupies a very original pictorial position within a German scene that is characterized by a particular attraction to the figurative and the narrative. It thus finds a privileged place within a broader reflection on the way of apprehending today's abstract pictorial research.
The painter thus continues to establish himself as an analyst among German abstract painters. His approach is not primarily based on reflection and confrontation with certain art historical traditions, such as Informal Art or American Abstraction. On the contrary, it resorts to the analysis of everyday objects and especially media images, source material that he archives in precise collages. From the photo report of a disaster to images of medical and scientific progress, he arranges his material in formal tableaux and composes, from common and familiar illustrations, a background of contemporary formal language, to which he confronts his paintings, in mirror, as comments.
Frank Nitsche has exhibited regularly in his galleries in Germany since 1994 and in the United States. He is present in numerous public collections such as the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Modern in London and the Ludwig Museum in Cologne.
Two solo exhibitions of the artist were organized in 2007 at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg and the FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions including: MUDAM - Musée d ́Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxemburg (2007); ZKM Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe (2006), Tate Modern, London (2006), Prague Biennale 2 (2005) , Centre Pompidou, Paris (2004).
Frank Nitsche is represented by Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels, since 2003.
