Robert seidel frachter /anglais/allemand - Hardcover

Robert Seidel (b. Grimma, 1983; lives and works in Leipzig) turns the city into a miniature of itself. Rows upon rows of tiny houses stretch across the canvas; now and then a building gets out of line, folds down to two dimensions, and then sits there like a pictogram. The artist gleans fragments of pop culture and local history and arranges them in a new order. The human figure receives the same treatment; reduced to simple cubic forms, Seidel's portraits nonetheless have a prototypical quality. While his construction of houses, human characters, and landscapes would seem flawless, the surfaces of his paintings are marked by technical imprerfection: the paint looks aged and sometimes seems to be coming off in flakes. Seidel's pictures thus combine precision with a weatherbeaten complexion and presence with a powerful awareness of the passage of time to which all imagemaking ultimately succumbs. Seidel, who was a distinguished student with Neo Rauch at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig, until 2011, now presents "Frachter," his first monograph. The book surveys the artist's work from 2006 to the present in fullpage reproductions and detail views as well as an index of works. With an esay by Kito Nedo.