28. März – 17. Mai 2019

He is a sculptor, Frank Gerritz, born in 1964 and living in Hamburg. And he is a draftsman – a detailed, meticulous and precise one. The fact that these are not “sculptor’s drawings” in the traditional sense is apparent immediately. Gerritz’s focus is on exploring the boundaries between sculpture and drawing.

His works may at first remind us of works of Minimalism, but they are not. Their quality, with all its precision, is based on the sensuality of life.

Galerie Haas is showing 8 works by the artist, including 2 so called MDF works with pencil and 6 works on anodized aluminum with paintstick. Gerritz covers in weeks of work his MDF works with lines of soft pencil 9B. The lines are drawn freely by hand, horizontally and/or vertically in a density and materiality as to reflect the light like mirrors. The artist also draws the lines on the works of paint stick on anodized aluminum freely by hand over weeks, and, due to the material composition of the paintstick, exclusively in the summer months.

Gerritz artworks live from the contrast of homogeneous MDF board or cool aluminum and the softness, warmth, movement, spatial expansion, change, energy, even tangible time and space of his materials. In all these works, Gerritz is primarily concerned with centres and edges, with lines and bodily surfaces, with the definition of volume and space. He plays on the contrasting pairs of light and dark, horizontal and vertical direction, fleeing and centring forces with virtuosity. But he always sticks to an imaginary geometric grid and to squares and rectangles.

From the beginning the artist has defined his parameters, which he has derived from his own physicality: 20 (size of a head), 60 (shoulder width, approximate average weight and walking distance of a person), 180 (body length of Gerritz himself). Gerritz never let go of these measurement intervals in centimeters and their connections.

His works illustrate in an unadorned but aesthetically fascinating way principles and basic laws of our and his existence. They are part of our intellectual and sensory experience, our physicality and part of our collective knowledge. In their contemplation, we recognize that this art is about relationships between events. That these cannot only change, but must change (following the law of entropy) is a perspective from which we ought to consider our entire existence.  And the fact that we are capable to do so can be taught by findings from the current scientific discussion, especially in the field of physics: if we take a closer look and sharpen our eye we can anticipate, perhaps recognize, and even look beyond – beyond those myriads of molecules in wild motion that rage in us all and in everything and determine our existence.

Frank Gerritz has had numerous museum exhibitions in Europe and the USA and gallery exhibitions worldwide since 1988. He also has exhibited several times in Zurich since 1995, most recently in 2000 in the Galerie Brandstetter & Wyss.

All the more we are pleased that his work will be seen again with new works in Zurich. The show will be accompanied by a catalogue available in German and English.