Franziska Reinbothe

Franziska Reinbothe’s works challenge the viewer to question conventional viewing habits by resisting a habitual, consuming way of seeing. Her art deconstructs the relationships in the image to create new identities at the same time. As a visual artist, her work is concerned with various strategies of image finding within painting. She is particularly interested in what normally remains hidden: the back of a painted picture and its edges. She makes these aspects visible by compressing canvases, exposing stretcher frames or dispensing with these elements. Her artistic process involves stretching, folding, breaking, cutting and/or sewing pictures after the painting process has been completed. She sees her work as a dynamic pictorial laboratory without restrictions and relies on exploring new possibilities. Reinbothe’s art operates in an area of indeterminacy in which actions and coincidences are realised simultaneously. She does not think in terms of images but bases her working method on a pictorial way of thinking in which actions with different image parameters are meaningful. For her, the process of creating a picture is not completed with the painting of a canvas, but also includes the processing of support constructions, picture edges and colours. Her interventions can only be planned and controlled to a limited extent, as she takes into account the potential inherent in the material.

Franziska Reinbothe studied at the Hochschule für Grafi k und Buchkunst in Leipzig (HGB Leipzig), where she graduated in 2010 with a diploma in painting/visual arts with a grade «Very Good». She continued her studies with a masterclass at the same institution from 2010 to 2013. Her works are represented in renowned collections such as the Collection of Contemporary Art of the Federal Republic of Germany, the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.