NYAB Event - Frank Thiel "New Work"

Frank Thiel "New Work"

Sean Kelly Gallery

This event has ended.

These new large-scale color photographs extend Thiel's photographic repertoire, yet continue to address the recent history of the city of Berlin. On this occasion, Thiel collects curtains found in abandoned East Berlin buildings, where they had remained for the last 15 years, becoming mute witnesses to the decline of East Berlin's industrial sector and the disappearance of its political system. The curtains, removed from their original setting, were archived, steam-ironed and photographed in a studio. By hanging them in front of windows during daylight, Thiel recreated the atmosphere of the original sites. The artist painstakingly arranged the fabric into rigid folds, working against the limitations of the inherent pliable nature of the material. The monumental photographs, enlarged to three times life size, take on an abstract character as a result of the carefully manipulated fabric, detaching them further from the original subject matter. Highly elaborate and textured, this new series of work brilliantly explores the intimate and evolving relationship between geometric abstraction and photography, whilst also being encoded with a strong socio-political context. In this new body of work, Thiel confidently positions photography and painting on common ground.