Katharina Fritsch

Matthew Marks is pleased to present Katharina Fritsch. The artist’s first exhibition in New York in six years includes a group of recent small-scale sculptures.

Fritsch’s sculptures are often based on familiar objects mined from the sphere of public knowledge. References to fairy tales, religion, cultural history, and everyday life serve as the foundation of her practice. Fritsch abstracts these symbols with manipulations of color and scale to create works that are at once inviting and mysterious. The perfect form and surface of her sculptures belie the fact that they are made by hand in the artist’s studio.

In the center of the gallery, a rotating pedestal displays a white trailer attached to a black car. Modeled after a child’s toy, the sculpture recalls the revolving plinths used in automobile shows. The work reflects Fritsch’s ongoing interest in toys, figurines, and retail display mechanisms, which have been sources of inspiration for the artist since the beginning of her career. Around this central display, Fritsch has arranged pink and yellow lanterns, a red cowry shell, and a green birch cross. A sculpture of two knots, one black and one green, each on its own pedestal, is also on view. Commonly called a “sailor’s knot,” this knot can also be found in the tangled rat tails of Fritsch’s sculpture Rattenkönig / Rat King (1993), first exhibited at the Dia Art Foundation in Chelsea in 1993. Fritsch has placed a metallic red star on the back wall of the rear gallery, glimpses of which can be seen from various vantage points throughout the exhibition.

Katharina Fritsch (b. 1956) lives and works in Düsseldorf. Her work was included in the central exhibition of the 2022 Venice Biennale, “The Milk of Dreams,” and she represented Germany at the 1995 Venice Biennale. She has had one-person exhibitions at museums across Europe and the United States, including the Kunstmuseum Basel, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Modern in London, K21 in Düsseldorf, Kunsthaus Zürich, and the Dia Center for the Arts in New York.