Transmogrifications
Drawings (some over prints) by Norbert J. Freese
Drawings (some over prints) by Norbert J. Freese
- Nightmare on Helm Street
- Panic at Catherine's
- Ari Returns
- Adornment to a Crucifixion
- The French Correction
- Clyfford's Yard
- Startling Self Portrait
- Re-membering
- A Natural Order
- Speechless
- Birds of Ohio
- Moonrise
- Collecting Thoughts About Small Trees
- Mercury, Electricity and Artaud at Rodez
- Mutation at Mingo Junction
- Music, After the Rain
- The Argument against History
- Freese, August
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1. Norbert J. Freese (b.1947) Nightmare on Helm Street (for Bob) |
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(click on image to print)
Nightmare on Helm Street (for Bob)
Ink drawing in handmade artist's frame, 1995-6, 295 x 216 mm. (framed 402 x 612 mm.). The figures, borrowed from the "Dance of Death" imagery of the 19th-century German artist Alfred Rethel, have been distorted, enlarged and fragmented into a colliding and entangled image of pure havoc. While the composition makes for a scene even more devastating than Rethel's prints, it is somehow contained in a serene perspective by the smoothly crafted frame with polished tree fragments. In addition, the insert of birds in the midst of the chaos also offsets it. Titled, dated and signed verso.
Norbert Freese is the one contemporary artist whose works we feature. Thus far, all of his works are drawings, frequently drawn over, or incorporating, late or damaged impressions or reproductions of old master prints, and thus transforming realistic images into surrealistic ones with personal and philosophical commentaries. His work has little in common with that of any other contemporary artist known to us, and we are both pleased and gratified that it fits so well with the kinds of art we love and offer.
Norbert Freese is the one contemporary artist whose works we feature. Thus far, all of his works are drawings, frequently drawn over, or incorporating, late or damaged impressions or reproductions of old master prints, and thus transforming realistic images into surrealistic ones with personal and philosophical commentaries. His work has little in common with that of any other contemporary artist known to us, and we are both pleased and gratified that it fits so well with the kinds of art we love and offer.
