Frank Gerritz - Gemini Royal Flush

Gemini Royal Flush was an installation of recent works by the German artist Frank Gerritz at Bartha Contemporary in London, on view from 15 August to 5 September 2020. It followed First Born Second, his solo presentation in autumn 2019, which closed a series of three events marking the opening of the gallery's private space in St James's. From 15 June 2020 his work had also hung there in the first instalment of the gallery's summer accrochage, with works by Susan Morris, Hadi Tabatabai and Nick Terry.

Gerritz was born in Hamburg in 1964 and lives and works there. He is a sculptor who works mostly in monochrome and with industrial materials: cast iron, oil paint-stick on anodised aluminium, and pencil on MDF, on paper or directly on the wall. In his wall works on anodised aluminium the composition often takes in the edges of each panel, and the contrast between the worked black surface and the reflective metal picks up the light and colour of the room. His drawings are built up layer after layer with a Faber-Castell 9B pencil, and the graphite grows shinier with each layer. Gerritz has described them as 'almost like mirrors, reflecting the surrounding outside world inside the surfaces of my works.'