Frank Nitsche’s (1964) large compositions involve a type of collage in which blown-up details from his collection of strange and absurd images gleaned from newspapers, magazines and internet, often giving the impression of having been made with the help of a computer programme. In fact, these pictures are the result of a more traditional process involving the patient working and reworking of oil paint that bear witness to the delays in the execution of the artwork. Despite the graphic motifs that seem to have been conceived in an industrial designer’s studio, the faults and ruptures remain visible and show the development of the painting as though it were a palimpsest.

ATP-2-2003 is typical of Nitsche’s work and is part of a series of strange architectural visions. The large disjointed coloured surfaces are connected by a shoring system in the plane and in the space of the painting, “Frank Nitsche’s images are experimental arrangements of pictorial construction. They belong to the genre of artistic basic research, in which painting becomes an optical experimental structure.” His “uncomfortable and restless panels are thus not paintings about painting. They are instead an inconsistent countermedium generating ever new conceits and disillusionments from the genetic nuclei of images.” (Gerrit Gohlke, "Revisionsbericht/Audit report/Rapport de revision", in : Frank Nitsche, Cologne, 2007)