PRESS RELEASE
Badur’s works exist as an active engagement between modernist art history and contemporary thought. Badur’s influences are international constructivism and American color field painting. In both his drawings and paintings, a specific spatial division is created by setting a distinctively colored rectangle into or onto a dominant color field. Within each larger area, Badur maintains a grid. When working on canvas, color fills the entire space. In the works on paper, the artist leaves a significant border of unmarked paper. The drawings employ a more subdued palette, given a very light toning through the use of a thin gouache. Light grids are drawn in pencil. The drawings call attention to the physicality of the paper. In the paintings, materiality is transmitted through color application. Brush strokes shimmer and reflect light, or open as veils to paint layers below. Intense color and paint surfaces add emotional content to the otherwise rational compositions. Whether working on paper or canvas, these works are meant to be experienced.
Frank Badur lives in Berlin. His works are in the collections of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Cambridge, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt/Main, the Ahrenberg Collection, Los Angeles, Malmo Konstmuseum, Sweden, the Neuberger Museum, Purchase, NY, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, the Progressive Collection, the Yale University Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among others.