Nicholas Bodde at White Cube Gallery, Berlin
Tina Kesting
When I walked into the White Cube Gallery in Berlin, I was confronted by the bright colorful stripes of three large paintings. My first thought: I had already seen such paintings, such horizontal bands so many times before. Why was someone returning to these old patterns? Is there a new chapter to be added to the famous studies of line, surface, color?
Flat and two-dimensional, Nicholas Bodde’s simply constructed paintings don’ t tell a story. And at first sight, I was bored by the simplicity of the arrangement of forms and colors of the work. Until, quite suddenly, these works became playful compositions.
The extreme clean, constructed arrangement I perceived in my first impressions were in fact an extravagant combination of attractive and disharmonious color fields. I later found out that the German porcelain factory, Rosenthal, had also found Bodde’s color fields curious and appealing; they have decided to use his décor for the purist modernist "Moon Cova" dishware series by the British designer Jasper Morrison.
I walked around the gallery and looked at the paintings attentively, approaching the works from different angles, viewing them at varied distances. The works were interactive: I moved and they moved; with each perspective, the proportions, colors and textures of the works changed.
Whether working with round disks or rectangles, Bodde maintains the harmonious proportion 1:2.33, the ideal dimensions of English house doors. Bodde is committed to the constructive-geometrical art of the early 20th century. For his geometrical and architectural plates, Bodde uses bright and colorful stripes that vary in their width from line to line, and from work to work. Mixing contrasting materials such as oil and acrylic, and foils and transparencies, Bodde creates a layered, textured composition. The colors of the matte and dull or bright and reflecting stripes vary in intensity and brightness of tone. Consequently, they appear as either two- or three-dimensional static or moving shapes and as harmonious balancing, and counterbalancing, fields. But this work is not calculated–Bodde explains, his choice of color and order the lineal structure is always spontaneous and depends on his mood.
I was alternately agitated and tranquilized by Bodde’s paintings, especially by the thought that I soon could have a nice cup of tea surrounded by his design. And I realized that, as Bodde played with colors, geometric forms, and architectural proportion, he was playing on my mood, forcing my state to balance and counterbalance.
