Leo Koenig Inc. is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by German artist, Frank Nitsche. Nitsche's exhibition marks the first solo show at the gallery's new home at 545 West 23rd Street, and his second exhibition with the gallery.

In his previous work, Nitsche bordered on the aggressive and confrontational, evincing the feeling of velocity and mechanical potentiality. In this new series of paintings, Nitsche is more restrained. Now the most elemental aspects of his abstraction are traversed, heavily dependent upon a linear grace, less relevant to a virtual speed. If in the past Nitsche's concerns were compression, speed and immediacy, he seems now more concerned with the essence of a moment, distillation of a template into it's purest form.

Nitsche's point of reference is still the ubiquitous lines of design that encompasses everything from athletic wear to architecture. And gesturally, Nitsche's paintings still allude to elaborate urban graffiti. But there has been a departure, a more considered approach to the paintings that relish in a moment of color, ever delineated by graphic sweeping lines. Forms appear weightless, and drips that fall from every direction disorients the viewer temporarily. But in an instant they are anchored and substantial. The colors in his paintings further highlight his approach to abstraction. The grey underpinning of the works acknowledges history but also looks through history to the nanosecond of the present where, Nitsche asserts, grey is the prevailing hue utilized by architects of contemporary culture.

Frank Nitsche's source materials are catalogued clippings from newspapers and magazine illustrations but really offer no direct links to his paintings except in a skeletal sense. Filed and catalogued, these imagistic materials serve as a compressed and conserved media diary. His systematic filing of resource material perhaps most closely influences the titles of his paintings, which are in fact simply serial numbers. His sources however, are digested and ruminated upon, later appearing in an outlined form upon a canvas as if through the process of some imagistic osmosis.

Frank Nitsche has had exhibitions at Natalie Obadia Gallery, Paris, White Cube, London and Max Hezler, Berlin. His work has been included in such prestigious international public collections such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Museum Ludwig and the Tate Modern among others. Frank Nitsche lives and works in Berlin.

For more information or visuals, please contact Elizabeth Balogh or Nicole Russo at the gallery.