Kunsthaus Zürich shows a retrospective devoted to the work of Katharina Fritsch
From 3 June to 30 August 2009, the Kunsthaus Zürich will host a retrospective devoted to the work of Katharina Fritsch, one of the most significant artists of our day. The show will also include new pieces by the artist.
Famed for her large-scale sculptures, whose hypnotic effect the viewer experiences in the blink of an eye, Fritsch plays with humanity’s primeval ideas, desires and fears. Her most recent art ventures into fresh artistic territory, including erotica as seen from the female point of view.
Giant, 2008 - Polyester, paint (196 x 95 x 70 cm) Postcard 4 (Franconia), 2008 - Silkscreen print, cintra, paint (280 x 405 cm) © 2009 ProLitteris, Zürich
With their succinct visual speech, works such as ‘Warengestell mit Madonnen’ (Display Stand with Madonnas), 1989, ‘Tischgesellschaft’ (Company at Table), 1988, and ‘Elefant’ (Elephant), 1987, firmly anchor themselves in the collective memory of the viewing public and are among the some 80 objects comprised by the retrospective at the Kunsthaus Zürich, where the artist has already been seen in the thematic exhibitions ‘Hypermental’ (2000) and ‘Signs and Wonders’ (1995), both of them, like the present show, curated by Bice Curiger.
Octopus, 2006/2009 Metal, polyester, paint, wood (140 x 120 x 120 cm) © 2009 ProLitteris, Zürich
The exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zürich is half composed of more recent and entirely new works, including large-format ‘Raumbilder’ (spatial images), which it presents as a precise interaction between sculptures and ethereally oversized silk-screens.
Visitors are greeted by a bright yellow cook bearing a bright yellow plate, on which are arrayed a bright yellow cutlet and similarly coloured potatoes and peas. The brilliant figure stands in front of a large image of a sinister-looking inn, the ‘Schwarzwaldhaus’.
Cook, 2008 - Polyester, paint (202 x 76 x 102 cm) Photograph 6 (Black Forest House), 2006/2008 - silkscreen print, cintra, peint (280 x 375 cm) © 2009 ProLitteris, Zürich
A further prominent example is Fritsch’s ‘Frau mit Hund’ (Woman with Dog), 2004, a large ensemble comprising a female figure composed of pink shells, 32 umbrellas floating on the ceiling, and magnified postcard views.
Woman with Dog, Umbrellas and Paris Postcards, 2004 Polyester, aluminium, iron, paint Installation view Matthew Marks Gallery, 2004 © 2009 ProLitteris, Zürich
And while an older group of works by Fritsch constitutes a curious modern elegy to the subject of the ‘garden’, one of her most recent pieces invites the viewer into a ‘meta-bedroom’: in her ‘smiling’ double bed strewn with rose petals and adorned with male pinups, Fritsch ventures with subversive levity into a masculine preserve of art history.
Garden Sculpture 3 (Skeleton Feet, 2006), Polyester, paint, 2008 (140 x 40 x 40 cm) Photograph 1 (Rose Garden), 1977–2007. Silkscreen print, cintra, paint (280 x 399 cm) © 2009 ProLitteris, Zürich
About the artist
Katharina Fritsch was born in Essen in 1956. She studied general and art history in Münster before attending Fritz Schwegler’s classes at the Art Academy of Düsseldorf, and showed her first sculptures in 1979. In the 1980s she frequently took her motifs from the world of commodities.
Her international breakthrough came in 1984 at Düsseldorf’s ‘Von hier aus’ (From Here On) exhibition. In 1988 she exhibited at the Kunsthalle Basel and in 1997 at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst. After representing Germany at the 1995 Venice Biennale she was the recipient of such major awards as the Aachen Prize for Art (1996) and the Piepenbrock Prize for Sculpture (2008).
Katharina Fritsch, 2008 Photo: Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin
Fritsch lives and works in Düsseldorf. In 2001 she was made a professor of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Münster, a post she holds to this day. That same year she was the subject of a major one-woman show at the Tate Modern in London, held in cooperation with Düsseldorf’s K21.
Kunsthaus Zürich
Heimplatz 1
CH–8001 Zurich
www.kunsthaus.ch
Open Sat, Sun, Tues 10 a.m.–6 p.m
Wed, Thurs, Fri 10 a.m.–8 p.m.
Holidays: 1 August 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
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