frank gerritz, skulptur

Frank Gerritz, "Skulptur - Standflaeche"

November 2 - December 28, 2019
taguchi fine art, tokyo

Born in Bad Oldesloe, Germany in 1964, Frank Gerritz now resides and works in Hamburg, Germany. Periodically he holds exhibitions in museums and gallerys in Europe and the United States. His works are housed in many museums and private collections as Weserburg, Museum fuer Moderne Kunst (Bremen), Gemeentemuseum (Den Haag), MusŽe Tavet Delacour (Pontoise), National Gallery of Art (Washington DC), Brooklyn Museum (New York), Collezione Panza di Biumo (Varese) and The Menil Collection (Houston), etc.

Frank Gerritz is undoubtedly one of the most outstanding artists of an abstractly and geometrically operating art. At a first glance, one might feel an inclination to categorize his works as a retracing of the path of Minimal and Conceptual Art, but this viewpoint would be far too one-dimensional, because GerritzÕs works lay claim to the live character of individual perception and go deeper than the surface, providing a complex weave of the most diverse references and points of view to the discourses of art history.

With his four solo shows and fairs, Taguchi Fine Art has introduced his four different important two-dimensional works until now: oil paintstick drawings on anodized aluminum, pencil drawings on MDF panel, pencil drawings on paper, and Invitationals/Auctions which are partly painted with a black paintstick over invitational cards of exhibitions or pages from auction catalogues. On this occasion, we would focus on his early sculptures and print works derived from those sculptures that are the sources of his current four important two-dimensional works.

In early days, Gerritz created sculptures as human head with stone. Around 1988 he shifted his work into abstract sculptures constructed with cast iron blocks of cube and rectangular parallelepiped. Those sizes are based on the dimensions of human body (size of head, the width of shoulders, and a step, etc.). While making the installation of those sculptures, he noticed none can see the bottom face, contacting with floor of the sculptures. Then an idea came to him to paint ink on the bottom face of the sculptures and took prints of these unseen bottom faces.

Thereafter, he made pencil drawings not only of the bottom face but of all faces of these sculptures. Since then he has been developing all his two-dimensional works from these pencil drawings until now.

Due to his concentration on the development of two-dimensional works and also the difficulty to find a precise foundry, he gave up completing all editions of these sculptures. Fortunately he could restart this task last year and made possible to show newly cast iron sculptures together with his print works.
A sculpture Òblockformation II (1990)Ó and more than a half of all 23 print works will be installed in this show.

checklist of the installation

1.
"Blockformation II", 1990/2019
solid cast iron, edtion 2/3
20 x 20 x 20 cm

2.
"Blockformation I", 1989
standflaechendrucke, edtion 6/10
2 pieces, 29 x 107 cm/ 50 x 107 cm

3.
"Blockformation II", 1989
standflaechendrucke, edtion 10/10
53.5 x 78.5 cm

4.
"Blockformation III", 1990
standflaechendrucke, edtion 9/10
53.5 x 78.5 cm

5.
"Crossblockformation", 1992
standflaechendrucke, edtion 2/10
53.5 x 78.5 cm

6.
"Block I-IV", 1988
standflaechendrucke, edtion 4/25
each 58 x 48 cm (a set of 4 pieces)

7.
"Two Center Block I-IV", 1996
standflaechendrucke, edtion 7/10
each 48 x 68 cm (a set of 4 pieces)