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FANNI FUTTERKNECHT

Fanni Futterknecht’s artwork is shaped by the act of staging. In her video work, her interventions in public space and her performanc-es always reflect social and philosophical questions by extracting them from the grounds of objective reality and transforming them to the point of fictionalization. Despite precise aesthetic stylization her works are often metaphorically charged and play with theatrical exaggeration, often broaching absurdity.

In her performances Futterknecht deals with the imaginations and fantasies of the audience. She orchestrates an abstract space for her— often highly artificial— protagonists to solil-oquize in lecture-performances, acting within a setting that, concurrently, they specifically create or arrange anew. Textile objects of different surfaces and sizes serve as performa-tive devices for visualizing images so as to alter and reflect emotional conditions. Thereby it is never the artist’s aim to analyze these special conditions, but to aesthetically stylize and illustrate them. Due to the use of a strongly metaphorical language, the staged becomes an imaginary space which is equal to the audience´s space of imagination. By designating and questioning concepts, things, and relations, the artist plays with aestheticized objectives and alienations; by means of association she is able to evoke situations, emotions or conflicts.

In other works Fanni Futterknecht abandons the idea of a central character as a main pole of action. She increasingly concentrates on installation works, that, however, always

involve a certain performative idea. Perhaps a performance took place before, so that the objects remain as a reference. For instance, an object increases its figure while emerging from another object- like a pillow that bears colourful little elements of fabric. Or the performative act is omitted and the actual “performance“ only exists as a connotation, when an object changes its appearance while stealing another object’s form: a pointed rod, for instance, that bores through a flat circle.The objects are always arranged so that their shape and materiality establish mutual interrelations. In contrast to Fut-terknecht’s performances, in which the central protagonist’s status constantly oscillates between subject and object, the staged objects in her installations are being deposed from their static nature. They now become “actors” themselves.

FANNI FUTTERKNECHT

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FOUNDATIONS

Text by Barbara Pflanzner

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FANNI FUTTERKNECHT

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FOUNDATIONS