Lutz Fritsch: gerade gebogen

Galerie Christian Lethert are pleased to announce their fourth solo-exhibition ‘gerade gebogen’ by Cologne based artist Lutz Fritsch (b.1955).

In the exhibition ‘gerade gebogen’ sculptures and drawings enter into a dialogue with each other. With his group of wall-sculptures titled ‘Outline,’ Fritsch breaks new ground within his ongoing investigation of space. He notes ‘So far my lines have always been straight, both in space or on the wall, but now they also start to leave the wall and become more dynamic.’

This also turns up in his new drawings called ‘Turbulences,’ characterised by their strong physical energy within a rotating line. Here, two colour planes interrelate and are covered and captured by circling lines. Between the rotation of the line and the balance of the colour planes a powerful area of tension occurs with a quiet centre. The image area becomes the action field of the three-dimensional movement. ‘In this process I am interested to find the balance, the proportion of quiet and dynamic,’ says the artist.

Fritsch’s drawings are always characterised by the dialogue of lines and colour planes. This principle also becomes visible in his group of works called ‘Architektur für Emotionen’(Architecture for Emotions), presented in the exhibition and for the first time extended by a large wall-drawing in the first room.

The sculpture ‘Gegenüber Rot’ unites distinctive features of Fritsch’s sculptures. The viewer encounters this red vertical at the wall as a sculptural counterpart. Within the exhibition it builds a calm counterpoint towards the dynamic drawings and sculptures.

Since 1978 Fritsch has been focusing on the relationship between line, colour, plane and space through work which connects to the intuitive and the analytic involvement within space. His site-specific outdoor sculptures investigate structures of space and therefore change given or build new spaces such as ‘Rheinorange’ (1992) in Duisburg, ‘Bibliothek im Eis’ (Library in Ice) (2005) in Antarctica or Standortmitte (2008) at both ends of the Autobahn 555 in Cologne and Bonn.

Lutz Fritsch received the Leo-Breuer-Award 2014 of the Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR). This was accompanied by an exhibition in the Gesellschaft für Kunst und Gestaltung (gkg) in Bonn displayed in November 2014.