Frank Gerritz
About
FRANK GERRITZ is a German artist born in Hamburg (DE) in 1964. He is a sculptor working primarily in monochromatic tones. His works are created with industrial materials including cast iron, oil paint-stick on anodised aluminium and pencil on MDF, paper or as wall drawings applied directly on the wall. Gerritz’s works are executed with precision, proportional systems and intrinsic geometric compositions.
His imposing works occupy a grey area somewhere between sculpture and painting. Like his older Minimal Art colleague Richard Serra, he concentrates primarily on drawing but sees himself as a sculptor. Sculptural aspects like matter and space therefore play a major role in his work. The thick, black paint he applies to the aluminium sheets looks both velvety and crude and industrial. Thanks to an ingenious hanging system, the sheets appear to float clear of the wall. The installation owes its power to the tension created by the multiple contrasts between light and dark, treated and untreated surfaces, and inflexible factory-made metal and flexible human hand.
Frank Gerritz trained in Hamburg, where he was part of the same generation and punk scene as Daniel Richter. That history is less surprising in Richter’s case, considering the expressive nature of his paintings, on show in the GEM as recently as 2008. It is more surprising in the case of Frank Gerritz, with his severely reduced and analytical visual idiom. However, that shared past is still reflected in the unremitting roar of hard rock and punk music that accompanies his entire working life in the studio. With that soundtrack in mind, his uncompromisingly aesthetic and apparently serene works suddenly assume a different and more dynamic charge.
Perhaps this also indicates a difference between the younger generation of Minimal Art practitioners and their predecessors: the physical aspect of the working process has once again come to play an important role. The same is true of the sensory impact of their art on the museum visitor: the monumental size of their geometrical compositions gives the work a spatial effect.
Frank Gerritz’s work is represented in a number of major collections, particularly in Germany and the US, including the Brooklyn Museum (USA), The Menil Collection (USA), the National Gallery of Washington (USA), and the Hamburg Kunsthalle amongst many others. It was the subject of large-scale retrospectives at the Neues Museum Weserburg in Bremen (2008 and 2010), the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (2009), the Hamburger Kunsthalle (2011), the Musée Tavet-Delacour, Pontoise (2011), the Kunstmuseum Bochum (2020-21), the Museum Wiesbaden (2021) and at the Casal Solleric, Palma de Mallorca, Spain (2024).
His imposing works occupy a grey area somewhere between sculpture and painting. Like his older Minimal Art colleague Richard Serra, he concentrates primarily on drawing but sees himself as a sculptor. Sculptural aspects like matter and space therefore play a major role in his work. The thick, black paint he applies to the aluminium sheets looks both velvety and crude and industrial. Thanks to an ingenious hanging system, the sheets appear to float clear of the wall. The installation owes its power to the tension created by the multiple contrasts between light and dark, treated and untreated surfaces, and inflexible factory-made metal and flexible human hand.
Frank Gerritz trained in Hamburg, where he was part of the same generation and punk scene as Daniel Richter. That history is less surprising in Richter’s case, considering the expressive nature of his paintings, on show in the GEM as recently as 2008. It is more surprising in the case of Frank Gerritz, with his severely reduced and analytical visual idiom. However, that shared past is still reflected in the unremitting roar of hard rock and punk music that accompanies his entire working life in the studio. With that soundtrack in mind, his uncompromisingly aesthetic and apparently serene works suddenly assume a different and more dynamic charge.
Perhaps this also indicates a difference between the younger generation of Minimal Art practitioners and their predecessors: the physical aspect of the working process has once again come to play an important role. The same is true of the sensory impact of their art on the museum visitor: the monumental size of their geometrical compositions gives the work a spatial effect.
Frank Gerritz’s work is represented in a number of major collections, particularly in Germany and the US, including the Brooklyn Museum (USA), The Menil Collection (USA), the National Gallery of Washington (USA), and the Hamburg Kunsthalle amongst many others. It was the subject of large-scale retrospectives at the Neues Museum Weserburg in Bremen (2008 and 2010), the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (2009), the Hamburger Kunsthalle (2011), the Musée Tavet-Delacour, Pontoise (2011), the Kunstmuseum Bochum (2020-21), the Museum Wiesbaden (2021) and at the Casal Solleric, Palma de Mallorca, Spain (2024).