Arts in Focus: FrankNitty3000 brings the grotesque into the beautiful

After I graduated, I was still quite young and had to figure out what I really wanted to do. A lot of the peers who I graduated with already knew what they were good at, and I was still exploring. I was making music videos and started working on fashion design projects, then moved on to art director and creative director for fashion companies. But after a while, I decided I didn’t want to stay in a desk job, so I moved to Japan – mainly for inspiration and trying to reinvent myself.

When you work on the inside of trends and whatever is the hype of the moment, you realise that it’s quite manipulative, and how things are forced on people or are made up. Those kinds of ideas are interesting to me – how psychology works, and how things and people cross-influence. I meet a lot of interesting and talented people as well, and all these different things have influenced the art that I do right now.

When I used to create films and videos, I realised that I always have to work with a team of people to accomplish anything. So I wanted to figure out a way to create stuff [where] I am 100 percent in control – and one of these ways was using photography and collage methods.

I started by looking at things that I’m interested in, and using photography as a base to create short videos. That process is super interesting – I like that transformation from still to movement. The starting point of my work is usually photography, either of stuff that I find or that people give or donate to me, or in the context of commercial work, things my clients provide to me.

We approach everything like a normal kind of editorial photo shoot, and then I take the work into my computer, where I deconstruct and reconstruct everything with software like Photoshop and After Effects, and do the animation work.

I love this kind of juxtaposition where, again, it’s a little bit manipulative. I try to manipulate the content in such a way that it becomes almost acceptable in your brain, whereas if you just analyse it intellectually, or write down on a piece of paper what’s happening on the screen, it would never work or be considered attractive. There’s definitely somewhat of a goal to create pretty unsettling things, but at the same time, it has to have a certain kind of aesthetic that hits you in your feelings somewhere.

Of course, there are a lot of things that I like. When I was young, I was always reading comic books that I wasn’t supposed to at that age, weird dark things; I used to be a street kid so [there was] skateboarding, and skateboard art, and art magazines; I went to a design school [Design Academy Eindhoven] so there are certain types of art movements and people like Dadaism.

All of that stuff really attracts me, but I try to leave it at the side because I realised once I start to zone into these things too much, I create things that are too predictable. What I really try to do with this work is turn it more into a meditation where I try to completely block out the so-called inspiration. Sometimes I don’t even listen to music when I work. I try to meditate and discover things that are just below the surface.

I’m not really a big advocate of digital art, per se. I think the reason why an artist will choose a certain kind of tool is always to be precise. How can I, in the most precise way, get my thoughts onto ‘paper’? It doesn’t really matter what the tools are. Some people use a paintbrush; another person will paint with a t-shirt; somebody else will dip their feet in a bucket of paint and start walking; or blowing paint through a straw – and we’re just talking about painting. But all these things are about what the artist uses to precisely create what’s in their head. 

I chose digital because it allows me to create exactly what I’m thinking about. In the end, what the tools represent is completely irrelevant to what you’re making. You can say digital is contemporary, or the future, but who knows what’s beyond that? I don’t really see a big distinction between traditional art and digital, and I don’t think that digital art represents the future. I think that digital art is just a tool that’s in the moment now.

I’ve been here over eight years already. I moved from the Netherlands to Japan because, like a lot of kids in the west, I dreamt that Japan is a mysterious place of inspiration. Obviously, it is a very inspiring place to be in because it’s so different from anything else, even in Asia. But at the end of the day, there’s also a lot of practicalities you have to deal with, and I realised after a couple of years that it’s very difficult as a foreigner to really create a career in Japan. 

Japan is a little bit insular, but one of the great things about Hong Kong is that it also has a very particular and unique culture, but it’s also a place that is very transient and open. It’s more multicultural, and for me, that’s very important. I have to be in a place where there’s hustle and bustle, and different things going on. After I realised that I wanted to stay in Asia, Hong Kong seemed like a place where it’s more practical to be in. Also, the city is very beautiful – it’s a place with a lot of contrasting things put together, which makes it pretty inspiring even just visually.

I always like to hang out in Sham Shui Po. If you’re looking for random inspiration, that’s the place to go. You can walk there for hours and hours and just find the weirdest, most unexpected things. There’s little vendors and shops, weird electronic junk from China, fabric stores, and so many cool little shops selling very specific things, in combination with vintage stuff.

 It makes me combine all these things in my head, that comes back to a mechanism type of stuff that I’m attracted to and is a theme in my work. Like an electronic gadget you could stick an old book on, and together it can become something weirdly interesting.

There is always this strange, underlying current of escapism, or a kind of wish to escape from something. It’s very hard for me to comment on it because it has a lot to do with how you grow up, culture, and really personal experiences, but I can taste a little bit of that escapism. This idea of there [being] something over the horizon that I’m trying to find, or a kind of confinement in little spaces where people are mentally looking for more of something in their head. At least, that’s how I interpret it.

What I do see is that Hong Kong has quite a serious institutionalised art scene. There are a lot of big galleries where people buy art for investment, so this institutionalised art scene is quite mature. But on a negative note, the non-institutionalised scene has to be supported more. If you’re a young artist in Amsterdam and you want to create something, for example, there are spaces available and some government support, so it’s a bit easier for young people to just explore and do shit. In Hong Kong, it would be good to see young artists getting more support from the government.

I’m always attracted to random guerilla people. I like Lousy a lot – he’s a graffiti artist who creates these pink and white and black faces in the city everywhere. He’s a really funny character who’s quite a rare cat – it’s not very common to have that kind of personality here in the city. He’s somebody that I like because of his attitude towards work. I think it’s really funny, but he has some darker stories as well sometimes. There was something he did at Art Basel [in 2022] that was about a local cat or something in the neighbourhood who only has three legs. This is also a typical example of somebody who needs to be supported. If you go to Berlin, there’s maybe 17 guys who have that same kind of Lousy attitude – but here in Hong Kong, there’s only one.

I will probably do some collaboration with HK Walls this year. Because of the way that buildings are laid out here in Hong Kong, their work is very cool. 

I’m also audaciously doing a world tour – like Taylor Swift. I want to do something ambitious enough for people to think that it’s impossible to do as a visual artist. 12 cities in 12 months, or something ridiculous like that. It’s almost like performance art; it’s not just about showing the art, but the performance of doing a world tour is also part of the art.

I will start the tour here in Hong Kong during Art Basel, then it’s very likely that I will be at Salone del Mobile [ed note: a design fair in Milan]. And then along the way, it will figure itself out. That’s my plan for this year.