Franziska Klotz
The powerful and intense paintings by Franziska Klotz bring the ancient medium of painting to life in a new way. Her contemporary historical paintings compress a variety of very personal impressions into autonomous painterly compositions. Areas where the paint is applied so thickly that its almost relief-like qualities stand in contrast with glaze-like, flowing sections. Fullness is next to emptiness, lightness alongside heaviness, the painterly next to the graphic, definition alongside deliquescence, representational next to the abstract. The unfinished and preliminary is part of the paintings, with elaborate detail set alongside vaguely sketched sections, where chaos continuously breaks into the deliberate ordering of the image field.
The powerful and intense paintings by Franziska Klotz (born 1979 in Dresden, Germany) bring the ancient medium of painting to life in a new way.
Her contemporary historical paintings compress a variety of very personal impressions into autonomous painterly compositions. The artist expertly employs the different modes offered by oil painting: she applies paint with a brush, a palette knife, and even with her fingers. Areas where paint is applied so thickly that it takes on almost relief-like qualities contrast with glaze-like, flowing sections.
Fullness exists beside emptiness; lightness alongside heaviness; the painterly next to the graphic; solidity alongside fluid dissolution; representational elements next to abstraction. The unfinished and provisional are integral to the works. Areas of elaborate detail are juxtaposed with loosely sketched passages, and chaos repeatedly breaks into the carefully considered order of the pictorial field.
As inspiration for her figurative compositions, Franziska Klotz uses her own photographs or found images, some of which she discovers in the virtual worlds of the World Wide Web.
The often light-hearted mood of her early paintings has given way in her recent works to more serious, mature themes: forests and trees, tangled undergrowth, swamps, fields, grottos, caves. In this overgrown vegetation, there is usually no longer a place for humankind. The human figure dissolves into nature, becomes marginal, or is completely expelled from the image.
Curator and author David Elliott observes:
"In her understanding, these works are less scenes of historical grief, death or redemption—such as those found in the barren landscapes and forests of Anselm Kiefer—than an affirmation of fragility, beauty and the power of creation in the face of the present, and of the inalienable truth that sooner or later we all return to nature."
Franziska Klotz studied painting at the Berlin-Weißensee Academy of Art. She is the recipient of the Max Ernst Scholarship awarded by the town of Brühl (Germany). Her works have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe and the United States, most recently at Art Miami 2012.
The artist lives and works in Berlin.
