Frank Nitsche (b. 1964) has developed a sophisticated visual language, overlapping layers of paint on top of one another, intersecting lines and creating specific forms. Geometric figures, lines and shapes are reduced to abstract formations reminiscent of construction plans, technical models, designs, calligraphy or computer programmes. To work on his abstract compositions, Nitsche makes use of a large visual archive taken from media, pop and consumer culture which he arranges, selects and condenses into his own pictorial idiom; his ‘albums’ are published as artists books or exhibited next to the paintings.
‘Nitsche exclusively develops his typically distorted and intertwined planar formalisations during the painting process – without any computer assistance, but nevertheless intentionally including a general aesthetic of medialisation in the paintings. In his opinion “all aspects of social life are designed. I understand my work”, says Nitsche, “as the resume and essence of all design, so to say, the deformed design of the zeitgeist, the over-design and the distortion of the over-design”. In this respect the scintillatingly compact, evocatively synthetic character of the paintings also harbours social-critical reflections. [...] Nitsche applies a unique pictorial logic to the development of every one of his paintings. For him there is no seriality; not even the formats are standardised. He enters the painting process completely: positioning a form, reacting to it in subsequent steps, obliterating existing parts, overpainting, complementing, erasing further parts, overpainting again, and so on. He continues this until a structure exists with the desired tension, rigour and dynamics.’
J. Asthoff, Into the Green in Frank Nitsche: Green, Galerie Max Hetzler, 2006
