Franziska Furter
27 Oct - 08 Dec 2012
FRANZISKA FURTER
O B A F G K M L T
27 October – 8 December 2012
SCHLEICHER/LANGE is pleased to announce the solo show of works by Franziska Furter. The focus of the Berlin based Swiss artist is on drawing: Franziska Furter concentrates on landscapes, phenomena from outer space, or borrows images from magazines or manga cartoons, combining them and defamiliarizing them to create virtually abstract forms, often limiting the spectrum of color to shades of black and white. The medium of drawing is a starting point from which she works toward the three dimensional, taking on space. Objects emerge that are site-specific, or engage with the place of exhibition, be it a mobile made of dozens of chimes in public space in Zurich (Mojo, 2012) or an exhibition space in Seoul that is overtaken with vines of artificial black foliage (Monstera, 2012).
At her exhibition "O B A F G K M L T" at SCHLEICHER/LANGE, Franziska Furter presents works from a new series of drawings for the first time (Corona, 2012). They are a continuation of the series Internal Friction (2009) in which geometric pencil drawings rub against running fields of watercolor.
In the Corona-series, the technique is simplified: using only drops of ink and soap, large format ring pictures emerge. The traces of color oscillate from nuances of bright gray to dark black, although the procedure is always the same. The secret here lies between chance and control: “It is a controlled chance: I take a structure or a system and let it run its course.”
The central, name giving work "O B A F G K M L T" (2012) is a filigreed, meandering construction of colorful wire structures. These objects seem like three-dimensional sketches that hover in the space. They shimmer in various spectra of color and develop a presence all their own despite their weightlessness. Installed to reflect the light of the space, they reflect the atmosphere and go into the space and the formal qualities as well as its light relations. Furter here quite consciously violates the stringency of the White Cube and installs compounds that oscillate between existence and non-existence like the weather. “I don’t seek to refract the light, but to redirect its path or bend it.”
Lightness and the almost emptiness and the basic subjects of this exhibition: the void stands for taking pause or the space of possibility. Especially in Taoist philosophy, things can only be understood based on their surroundings or empty space. They are only completely understood when they are seen from the void. The void here is not just the prerequisite for life, but what allows for the “filled” to develop its complete power.
Franziska Furter also reduces her gestures until all that remains is the essential. Like the weather, the artist unconsciously triggers moods in the beholder. She achieves this byway of sublime interventions and a controlled play with chance. The circles of the soap drops leave behind and form the inside of the ink-ring, the wires shimmering in many colors redirect the light. It is these reduced gestures of Franziska Furter that place art between the filled and the unfilled at the center of attention and thus develops its full power.
Franziska Furter’s work has been shown at numerous exhibitions: including solo shows at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo (Module), Towner in Eastbourne, and Les Halles in Porrentruy, Switzerland, as well as group shows at Kunsthaus Graz, the Henry Moore Foundation in Leeds, Kunsthaus Aaarau, and Kunstverein Freiburg.
Text: Dr. Christine Nippe
O B A F G K M L T
27 October – 8 December 2012
SCHLEICHER/LANGE is pleased to announce the solo show of works by Franziska Furter. The focus of the Berlin based Swiss artist is on drawing: Franziska Furter concentrates on landscapes, phenomena from outer space, or borrows images from magazines or manga cartoons, combining them and defamiliarizing them to create virtually abstract forms, often limiting the spectrum of color to shades of black and white. The medium of drawing is a starting point from which she works toward the three dimensional, taking on space. Objects emerge that are site-specific, or engage with the place of exhibition, be it a mobile made of dozens of chimes in public space in Zurich (Mojo, 2012) or an exhibition space in Seoul that is overtaken with vines of artificial black foliage (Monstera, 2012).
At her exhibition "O B A F G K M L T" at SCHLEICHER/LANGE, Franziska Furter presents works from a new series of drawings for the first time (Corona, 2012). They are a continuation of the series Internal Friction (2009) in which geometric pencil drawings rub against running fields of watercolor.
In the Corona-series, the technique is simplified: using only drops of ink and soap, large format ring pictures emerge. The traces of color oscillate from nuances of bright gray to dark black, although the procedure is always the same. The secret here lies between chance and control: “It is a controlled chance: I take a structure or a system and let it run its course.”
The central, name giving work "O B A F G K M L T" (2012) is a filigreed, meandering construction of colorful wire structures. These objects seem like three-dimensional sketches that hover in the space. They shimmer in various spectra of color and develop a presence all their own despite their weightlessness. Installed to reflect the light of the space, they reflect the atmosphere and go into the space and the formal qualities as well as its light relations. Furter here quite consciously violates the stringency of the White Cube and installs compounds that oscillate between existence and non-existence like the weather. “I don’t seek to refract the light, but to redirect its path or bend it.”
Lightness and the almost emptiness and the basic subjects of this exhibition: the void stands for taking pause or the space of possibility. Especially in Taoist philosophy, things can only be understood based on their surroundings or empty space. They are only completely understood when they are seen from the void. The void here is not just the prerequisite for life, but what allows for the “filled” to develop its complete power.
Franziska Furter also reduces her gestures until all that remains is the essential. Like the weather, the artist unconsciously triggers moods in the beholder. She achieves this byway of sublime interventions and a controlled play with chance. The circles of the soap drops leave behind and form the inside of the ink-ring, the wires shimmering in many colors redirect the light. It is these reduced gestures of Franziska Furter that place art between the filled and the unfilled at the center of attention and thus develops its full power.
Franziska Furter’s work has been shown at numerous exhibitions: including solo shows at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo (Module), Towner in Eastbourne, and Les Halles in Porrentruy, Switzerland, as well as group shows at Kunsthaus Graz, the Henry Moore Foundation in Leeds, Kunsthaus Aaarau, and Kunstverein Freiburg.
Text: Dr. Christine Nippe