Franziska Klotz – Grund Risse
Franziska Klotz's works are windows into our world: they capture our gaze with painterly magic, but we see through them to the things that really concern us. In the exhibition GRUND RISSE Franziska Klotz presents her latest works at 69salon by Kornfeld.
On the occasion of Berlin Art Week 2023, 69salon by KORNFELD presents new works by Franziska Klotz under the title GRUND RISSE in its project space.
In his essay Stützen der Gesellschaft, philosopher Björn Vedder comments on the new works by Franziska Klotz:
“We enter the exhibition through the window, that is to say, through the paintings the artist calls ‘panes’: Glass II (2022), Glass III (2022/23), and Glass V (2023). The works demonstrate Franziska Klotz’s artistic mastery: the almost photorealistic appearance of glass, the casual abstraction, and the compositional skill in colour and proportion. Klotz has been working on this motif for four years. It connects the exhibition at 69salon by KORNFELD with her oeuvre like no other.
The panes provoke our gaze. They address us, astonish us, and challenge us to look through them. Finestra aperta. The image is an open window. Yet the reality it reveals lies on another level, in the realm of thought. It is about social and philosophical questions—and about ourselves. In the mirror (Glass V), we cannot see ourselves; instead, we are confronted with our desire to be reflected. Where does this desire come from? Why do we want it? Do we always search for ourselves in images? Hermeneutic circles in shattering glass.
Among the social and philosophical questions raised by the paintings is how we view the suffering of others. The empty, overturned, and piled-up chairs in the works Pink Elephant (2022), Generation C 1 (2022), and Generation C (2023) reference the Columbine High School massacre of 1999 and Michael Moore’s documentary on gun violence made in its aftermath (Bowling for Columbine, 2002). But they also address the power of images in relation to representing and understanding—or feeling compassion for—the suffering of others.
Susan Sontag criticized war photography for commodifying the pain of others, reducing it to a consumable product for the emotional needs of well-fed urban audiences (‘People want to cry’), or at best provoking unstable emotions that are never translated into action. She therefore demanded that images be turned into narratives. Klotz, by contrast, demonstrates the unbroken power of images by not depicting suffering itself, but rather its traces in incidental objects such as overturned tables and abandoned chairs—images that show only a detail (like the famous pair of baby shoes in Hemingway’s short story, sold unworn), forcing viewers to imagine the suffering behind them.
No Stop, No Go (2022), with its motif of a traffic light, refers to the delicate interplay between freedom and order. There is no freedom without order (no rights without laws), but any order without freedom is worthless. Klotz’s traffic light goes beyond this debate: it melts in the heat, raising the question of what causes this symbol of balance between rights and duties to dissolve. What lies on the other side of the pane? Our passions and drives? Or is there behind all systems of order and value merely a will to power—a ‘play of forces and force-waves’ that disguises itself alternately as order, freedom, good, or evil?
Brighton Pier (2023) can be read as an allegory of our society, often compared to an amusement park because of its hedonism and near-total protection from risk. But what are the pillars of this society? Economic growth? Unlimited fuel and endless storage for waste? Freedom? Inventiveness? Critique? Democracy? Klotz does not name these pillars explicitly, but—like Ibsen or Grosz—she shows unmistakably that they are rotten. Looking back at the exhibition from Brighton Pier, however, we can identify clues: our relationship to ourselves, our compassion for others, and the balance between order and freedom.
Klotz’s works are windows into our world: they captivate our gaze with painterly magic, yet through them we see the things that truly concern us.”
— Björn Vedder
Franziska Klotz (born 1979 in Dresden) was awarded the Max Ernst Scholarship of the City of Brühl and worked in 2015 and 2018, at the invitation of the Goethe-Institut, as a fellow of the German Cultural Academy Tarabya in Istanbul. Her works have been exhibited internationally, including at the 56th October Salon in Belgrade (2016), Fanø Art Museum in Denmark (2017), Hamburger Bahnhof (2018), Kulturforum Schorndorf (2019), and Kunstraum Kreuzberg (2021). She is currently showing the exhibition GiRLS at Sylter Kunstfreunde.
The exhibitions in Sylt and Berlin are accompanied by a publication: 56 pages, 46 colour illustrations, with texts by Ingeborg Ruthe, Björn Vedder, Michael Wutz, and Petra Nies.
