Frankfurters-Hamburgers 1989

Robert Cottingham made "Frankfurters-Hamburgers" with paint, and you can almost feel the sun beating down on that corner. I love to imagine the kind of patience it takes to build up those flat planes of colour. Cottingham’s known for these super-detailed urban scenes. It reminds me a bit of the New Topographics photographers, but with a painterly twist. It's like he's saying, "Hey, even the most ordinary spots have a certain kind of beauty, if you really look." The crisp lines and almost hyper-real quality make it feel both familiar and slightly alien. There's this interesting tension in painting where you're trying to capture something real, but you're also making something totally new. It’s not about tricks. It’s about truth, a kind of seeing that takes time and care. When you look at this painting, you're not just seeing a diner, you're seeing an idea about diners, about America, about the way we see. That’s the cool thing about painting, isn’t it?