Franziska Klotz focusses on young people in her "sur-faces" series. She uses selfies and photos with which the adolescents present themselves online as models. We thus see self-portrayals of young people, captured anew through the eyes and painting hand of Franziska Klotz.
The title "sur-faces" alludes both to the smooth surfaces of smartphones and to the faces of the mostly female protagonists. Their bodies, photographed in protected spaces, open up to the vastness of the internet. Where does the materiality of being remain in this process, how can we approach the young people artistically despite the separating displays? Franziska Klotz chooses an expressive and fragmenting way of painting: the canvases, some of which are left raw, have a decisive influence on the expression of the paintings, making it seem as if they are just as vulnerable as the people depicted. The fleeting, often trivial moments that the mobile phone photos originally captured - created in the unreal period between childhood and adulthood - are made permanent in Franziska Klotz's works.
The artist adds images of shattered panes of glass to the "sur-faces" series. Just as the surface of the painting marks a boundary between two worlds, between the before and the behind, the screen of a smartphone is just such a marker. By depicting demolished panes of glass, Franziska Klotz works out those borderline moments in which the two worlds can meet.
»In my paintings, I explore the fragility of young people in the field of tension of social dynamics. Photographic selfies from digital spaces are used to create figures that are less individual portraits than expressions of collective states - characterised by self-dramatisation, withdrawal and rebellion. In terms of motifs, broken glass, chair barricades and tilting chandeliers complement the works as condensations of social and psychological ruptures. They reflect an atmosphere of permanent threat and the fragile relationship between protection, control and violence. My painting questions community, vulnerability and the possibility of taking a stand in a fragile present. It does not search for unambiguity, but for the nuances in which perception, doubt and social reality resonate together«
About Franziska Klotz
1979 born in Dresden
1998 - 1999
Internships at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, the Volksbühne Berlin and the Berliner Ensemble
1999
Studied stage and costume design at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts
2000 - 2005
Painting studies, Berlin-Weißensee School of Art, Diploma
2006
Master student of Werner Liebmann, Berlin-Weißensee School of Art
Franziska Klotz lives and works in Berlin.