COLUMN DRAWING

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Frank Gerritz‍

The Column Drawing, 1992

Graphite pencil on column
400 x circumference 180 cm

Stark Gallery, New York, NY, USA

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At the centre of this room was a column and I had to make an art piece out of it!

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... we had a restorer sand everything down. I wasn’t interested in the decorative detailing, just the round middle section, which I wanted to turn into a drawing. This 'core' is something, at least for me, which is equally as important as the wall. The column supports the entire building and ties the architecture together.At the time I think Alison [Green] remarked that the work was like Brancusi’s Endless Column. Indeed, as the gallery was located on the third floor of an eight floor building,  it would have been possible to repeat the drawing on each floor.Maybe it was a coincidence, but when I hugged the column I could put my fingers together, the circumference was, yet again 180 cm, a measurement that would come to follow me throughout my work.

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CENTER DRAWING

HEADLINE

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Frank Gerritz

Headline, 1995

Graphite pencil on wall
20 x approx. 2000 cm

Kunstraum Neue Kunst, Hannover, Germany

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As its title most literally suggests, Headline was drawn according to Gerritz’s already established dimensions for sculptures and drawings. It was at head-height and 20 cm high, a nearly 20 meter-long horizontal scan around the room in the wall space Gerritz would typically use for hanging his drawings. _{Extract from 'Five Wall Drawings', an essay by Alison Green}

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LOWDOWN

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‍Frank Gerritz

Lowdown, 2008

Graphite pencil on wall
160 x 900 cm

Weserburg Museum für Moderne Kunst, Bremen, Germany

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Lowdown ... points to an early moment in Gerritz’s life—before his career as an artist—when as a teenager he was active in Hamburg’s Punk scene. Lowdown is a song by the British band Wire, which Gerritz first heard on the compilation album, ‘Live at the Roxy’ (1977). It’s a slow burn of a song, Blues-inflected, keyed low, and repetitive. Gerritz’s drawing, a long, horizontal rectangle set flush with the floor, takes the song’s title literally and also emotes its heavy style. He’s interested that the drawing takes up a space few artworks have ever occupied in the room.

For Gerritz Lowdown also signifies the stage a band plays on, which, like the drawing is about neck high, but never over the head. There are also explicit parallels to be made between “live”versus “studio” music and the differences Gerritz sees between his wall drawings and the works he makes in the studio.

Extract from 'Five Wall Drawings', an essay by Alison Green

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