Color Iteration in random Sequence

Nico Franz

1981 Cottbus, DE

Color Iteration in random Sequence, 2019

Pixel on Canvas

Image description

We see a square surface. On this a matrix of squares is represented. The colors of the squares result from a narrowly defined color range, so that several squares can have the same color. The number of color tones used is 22, and the color palette covers the entire color spectrum. The arrangement and number of colored squares themselves is random and thus not subject to any pattern. However, there are always 2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,20,30,40,50,60,70 or 80 squares per column in as many rows. This results in a number of squares ranging from a minimum of 4 to a maximum of 6400.

Image Explanation

Many suspect this copyist masterpiece to be a parody of Gerhard Richter, a contemporary Dresden painter. Gerhard Richter is admired by copyists all over the world because of his uncompromisingly inconsistent oeuvre that cannot be attributed to any specific direction. Even if one could accuse him of arbitrariness here and there for individual series of works, he is above such criticism because of his entire oeuvre. A panel from "Version III" of Gerhard Richter's cycle "4900 Colours" was exhibited as a professional picture on his Facebook account throughout 2019. Despite its minimalism, his pre-copist artwork surprises with its diversity, the full extent of which can only be revealed to the inclined art critic. Richter's work "4900 Colours" thus raises the question of whether there is a spatial limitation to art and whether it is allowed to have a site-specific claim at all.
That Nico Franz was aware of Richter's series at the time he created "Farbiteration in zufälliger Folge" is disputed. He himself made the following statement when asked.

I did not know Master Richter's work. Consider. First of all, I think programmatically. To put a series of squares into a square and to paint each one colorfully, ... What can be idea about it, what can be work about it? Rather, this is precisely the first exercise of a programmatic copyist. Like the child who ties bows. Is there also asked whether master Richter did this already before?

Nico Franz Copyist

The copyist work as the result of a technical process

The self-awareness of not declaring this work of his programmatic creation as art makes Nico Franz independent of a judicial decision. For him, this work is merely the image of a technical process, parameterized randomness on the smallest level of art, the point. Here as a square.

Subsequently, Nico Franz described his work as a proposal for a true modernization of contemporary art according to a copyist understanding, contrary to the interests of the art market.