Visual Arts in Germany: Exhibitions and Artist Portraits

It is a successful revival in more ways than one. A solo exhibition of the works of Katharina Fritsch, a German sculptress very much celebrated in the 1990s, was long overdue. It is not however just her sculptures with their familiar, strictly censured forms that are on display at the Kunsthaus Zürich. Fritsch surprises us with flirtatious glimpses of a new rococo.

Occasionally he can still be seen standing in front of the odd restaurant in Switzerland – the large-as-life figure of a chef, in servile pose, presenting any potential guests with a plate of his good, traditional fare – all made of plastic, of course. After the Second World War doormen of this ilk might still have inspired trust and confidence, these days however they tend to conjure up images of a “greasy spoon”. Katharina Fritsch’s chef is a particularly savoury example – the figure has been painted in a light yellow that has been brightened up with white and he conveys the feeling that he has jumped straight off a packet from the “flavour-enhanced” era of Maggi & Co. The German sculptress uses this Swiss embodiment of former “food culture” as a jovial market crier for the overview exhibition of her work at the Kunsthalle Zürich. It is this figure in particular, made from one plastic cast, that instantly takes us to Katherina Fritsch’s artistic universe – a cosmos teeming with all kinds of prefabricated objects. The artist, who was born in 1956, has always been on a quest in the consumer world to find devotional objects from long faded cultures. Past discoveries include whole batches of Madonnas, black polyester panthers and bargain bins full of printed fabric handkerchiefs. It has to be said however that her sculptures were almost never faithful facsimiles of existing industrial products, but were more sophisticated mutations of products that people could easily call to mind.

Consistent and effortless

After some substantial individual exhibitions in the 1990s and spectacular public shows, like the 1997 Münster Skulptur Projekte, things quietened down a little for Katherina Fritsch. That is why it was all the more gratifying when this sculptress with her extremely precise way of doing things was awarded the much sought-after Piepenbrock Prize for Sculpture (worth 50,000 euros). At the Kunsthalle exhibition in Zurich one can experience just how consistently and effortlessly Fritsch has been able to pursue her sculptural approach that has been with her for so long, yet her sculpture bears more or less no hallmarks. Fritsch’s sculptures still have an irritating auratic presence. They are irritating because their flawlessness endows them with a transcendent coldness. Although we are dealing with supposedly familiar products from our own consumer society, the figures, animals and Madonnas are charged with a certain mythical force that is hard to decipher. On the one hand sombre works like the Tischgesellschaft (Company at Table) and the Rattenkönig (Rat King) provide insight into the phase of Fritsch’s career when she filled the frightening caverns of our collective memory with mechanically reproduced monsters. As such Tischgesellschaft (Company at Table) (1988) is a response to the death of the author or even of the individual – a black-haired “Man without Qualities” is seated at a table in the company of 32 other figures who all look the same. His plastic comrades are equally as desolate and non-communicative, their empty eye sockets staring at their white hands that have all been placed in the same position on the tablecloth. It remains a remarkable piece of work indeed in these days of genetic engineering and artificial insemination.

A flirtation with the Paris of the 1950s

In her more recent works however Fritsch soars to new heights with an intriguingly coquettish dalliance with Mannerist paragons that seem to stem from the souvenir industry. Centre-stage is taken by a female figure in baby-pink holding a parasol – the phenomenal Frau mit Hund (Woman with Dog) from 2004. Her skirt sticks out from her wasp-like waist in such a frivolous manner, as if this woman, made entirely out of shells, is giving us a twirl at a rococo ball. What appears to be her dog is in fact a floor arabesque made of shells. There are 32 umbrellas hovering below the ceiling like weightless balloons. A weird flirt with the Paris of the 1950s seems to be wafting through the room. The walls are hung with Parisian postcards that have been enlarged to poster size and that have also been lithographically diluted. They show typical Parisian sights like the Eiffel Tower - reactivated memories from her childhood that Fritsch has put into plastic form and size. She shows that it is indeed possible to dance to the tune of the light muse, if the steps are executed with skill. The earlier futility of an autistic community that keeps going round in circles is passé. Even the rules about the numbers and rigid measurements governing Fritsch’s installations have been relaxed a little. It would be nice if she were to be proved right with her dance-like vision and a little Parisian flair were to breeze into our world. After all, even the Tischgesellschaft (Company at Table) took ten years to unfold its full, bitter truth..

Exhibitions
Kunsthaus Zürich
until 30th August 2009
Catalogue: CHF 48.–

Deichtorhallen Hamburg
6th November 2009 until 7th Februar 2010