GOB-41-2007
Frank Nitsche b. 1964
2007
oil on canvas, 2100 x 2000 mm
signed verso: ‘GOB-41-2007/ 2007/ Nitsche’
Frank Nitsche is an avid traveller - the day the Berlin Wall fell he was on a train heading West. He informs his painting through an absorption of landscapes, cities, cultures, sub-cultures and pop cultures. Nitsche is an ardent collector whose famous ‘Atlas’ (a vast archive of photographic imagery) is stashed in his studio, alongside stacks and columns of used drink cans, rubber masks, more Halloween paraphernalia, Middle Eastern keepsakes and dysfunctional or distressed plastic toys - a pre-loved Bart Simpson and a Donald Duck (a fake, perhaps) to name just two. This studio flotsam of heterogeneous imagery and objects is digested and recycled into controlled, beautiful and often monumental paintings. In his 2006 painting, GOB-41-2007, Nitsche translates 24 point Arabic script into red arabesques which circumnavigate and dissect huge planes of white and grey. GOB-41-2007 is a monument to the exaggeration and mutation of cultural minutiae.
Nitsche’s forms are biomorphic, mobile and architectural, bringing to mind highway designs, circuitry and sports gear. Such forms are flat and fast and his palette a Disneyland collaboration with the sobriety and de-saturation of the former GDR. It’s easy to imagine Nitsche as a master calligrapher when you view his painting. His restrained curves and handling of materials echoes Giotto or Deibenkorn, and the futuristic architectures of Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Oscar Niemeyer.
Born in Görlitz, Eastern Germany, Frank Nitsche trained at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Dresden, alongside Eberhard Havekost and Thomas Scheibitz. He lives and works in Berlin.