Laura Franzmann
Laura Franzmann (Germany) studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK) and at Goldsmiths, University of London, graduated from HFBK Hamburg in 2017 with an MFA and currently lives and works in Berlin.
Selected exhibitions: Spring Water Tastes Funny, Kunstverein Jesteburg 2021 (solo); It Takes Two, Galerie Wassermühle Trittau 2019 (solo), and group shows: 2022 Arbeitsstipendium für Bildende Kunst der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg 2020/21, Deichtorhallen Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg, Nominees, Kunsthaus, Hamburg 2021 and Twittering Machine. Positionen junger Bildhauerinnen aus Deutschland, Burg Galerie im Volkspark, Halle 2020.
Portrait: © Jenny Schäfer
About Laura’s edition for leikela:
TISSUE DAKO
Edition: Watercolor on Japanese washi paper and bamboo, hand-painted, edition of 20, 39 x 27 cm (additional tails and strings), 2019. Note: The kite can be flown and combined to make a kite train.
Tissue Dako, with its bamboo framework and white strings for additional tension, is a Japanese-style kite that is a variation on the traditional kite type called Kaku Dako. A hand-painted motif on Washi paper forms the kite-skin, which is modeled to create a juxtaposition of various influences. The painted motif recalls the shape of a face, abstracted and falsified. For Laura, the human face needs to be reduced to its structural components to be used in a purely ornamental form. She not only works with UV-Maps that were developed in the context of modeling a 3D-human figure, but also other schematic plans of the human face, muscle and bone structure, hidden just under our skin. The painting is also reminiscent of imprints of faces on paper, which is a more abstract yet direct form of self-portrait. Drawing from these various conditions of the human face, she creates paintings that are able to simultaneously (re)present it from the outside and inside, what is open for all to see and what lies hidden just beneath the skin. Just as faces in their various forms need to be animated by muscles, or a program, to move and be read by others, the kite is animated by air and its face starts to move as well. The kite-skin itself dissolves the idea of the skin as a barrier that separates the exterior appearance from its fleshy components or that separates the human body from the metaphysical concepts of it. What you see is what you get.
Text by Marija Petrovic
Other works by Laura:
UV-covering (King Size), 2017, © Sarah Hablützel
somatosensory carpet, 2017
comforting body topology (hands), 2017
untitled (detail), 2015, © Edward Greiner
More about Laura’s work: