Frank Wiebe

Mountains as an image motif have been addressed as a topic in art history at the latest since the Romantic period. The painter Frank Wiebe takes up this motif anew in his current series of paintings, and engages in an intensive examination of the depiction of nature and landscape.

In his semi-figurative abstractions, the painter works from historical drawings and photographic documents, as well as from Internet sources. He looks into his (mountain) constructions from a great distance, but also looks behind their façade, as if in an x-ray image, at the same time. Views from above, through, and below merge with one another—an attempt to make the contemporaneity of diverse structures and forms visible.

The book presents works from his new series, Shifted Mountains and Over Russia, which range from tonally reduced, blackish-blue, nocturnal views of silhouette-like mountains in free flight, to contour-like continent and/or island shapes on a radiant turquoise or rose-colored ground.