Frank Nitsche: Chloé Top, Versace pants, oeuvres récentes

Frank Nitsche was born in 1964 in Görlitz, in the former GDR. He studied at the Dresden Academy at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and has been living and working in the German capital for nearly ten years. After two exhibitions at the Galerie Nathalie Obadia in 2002 and 2006, he returns with the exhibition Chloé Top, Versace Pants and presents a series of recent paintings.
Nitsche favors a palette alternating acid and pastel colors. His geometric abstractions have their origins in constructivist painting. At first glance, these paintings show a flat, polished surface. 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 ...
As in Berlin at the Galerie Max Hetzler in 2008, Frank Nitsche punctuates the exhibition with a long column Glutney Reggae Latte, 2009, made of various beverage cans covered with stickers, as many visual signs composing his travel archives.
Nitsche's recent paintings are characterized by the collision of angles and surfaces. Contours intersect, creating the illusion of 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.

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).