NICHOLAS BODDE

Born in 1962 in New York, USA, lives and works in Germany.

Nicholas Bodde paints on aluminum surfaces, layer by layer. The interplay of his colored bands, some wider than others, and the varying thickness of the material, sometimes smooth, sometimes granular, cause the light to reflect differently. His preoccupation with color leads him to create unlikely combinations, and as he himself says, if it works, it's because the painting has gained its autonomy and can leave the studio. It's a strident painting, one could compare it to free jazz; its palette of very vivid, even garish, colors accentuates the vitality that emanates from it.

Nicholas Bodde paints on aluminum surfaces, layer by layer. The interplay of his colored bands, some wider than others, and the varying thickness of the material, sometimes smooth, sometimes granular, cause the light to reflect differently. His preoccupation with color leads him to create unlikely combinations, and as he himself says, if it works, it's because the painting has gained its autonomy and can leave the studio. It's a strident painting, one could compare it to free jazz; its palette of very vivid, even garish, colors accentuates the vitality that emanates from it.

“Of course, my work is rooted in the tradition of geometric art from the first half of the 20th century. But I also feel connected to the concepts of Color Field painters like Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman, which have nothing to do with the often dogmatic systems of color, form, and proportion in Concrete Painting. Although I am committed to stripes as a structural element, my work is intuitive. The internal forms, as well as the choice of colors, are always spontaneous. The surface of each color plane is treated differently. I use Constructivist strategies to define the structure of my paintings so that I can better focus on the characteristics—light, value, tonal gradation, quantity, and surface structure of the colors. My paintings reveal themselves differently up close and from a distance. Viewed from several meters away, they clearly appear linked to Constructivist geometric tendencies. But up close, one notices that my primary focus is painting, not construction.” In my effort to create an interaction between the qualities and quantities of colors in a demanding compositional style, I always dream of a painting with colors that no one has seen before

Nicholas Bodde, September 2021.