ART Habens Art Review, Special Edition

Page 151

Renata Franzky

the real and the imagined. Scottish painter Peter Doig once remarked that even the most realistic paintings are derived more from within the head than from what's out there in front of us, how do you consider the relationship between reality and imagination, playing within your artistic production?

ART Habens

is the focus on the human being with all his fears and hopes, and we really appreciate the way your figures work as an Ariadne's thread that unveils the elusive still ubiquitous link between reality and the subconscious. To quote Max Ernst's word, every human being has an inexhaustible store of buried images in his subconscious and into his inner world: it is merely a matter of voyaging into the unconscious, to bring pure and unadulterated found objects to light. How important is for you to show the link between the inner world and the outside reality? And how does your everyday life's experience fuel your artistic research?

Renata Franzky: The ability to imagine is what distinguishes an artist. Peter Doig has an enormous imagination and is one of the most important and honest modern mystics for me. He formulates his statements so directly and precisely that it takes your breath away and hurts. Our everyday life is so mysterious and full of hidden things. Since the time when artists no longer just have to depict nature, they have the freedom to address the “invisible” in us and in our real world. How can an artist make the “invisible” visible? Only by increasing your own imagination, in my opinion. And by staying with “himself”, not imitating or copying anyone.

Renata Franzky: The connection between the inner world and the outer reality is the basis and the core statement of my painting. I want to shake up the viewer and say: "Look, there is more! Have you already discovered that too?"... Through daily sketching (I always have a sketchbook with me), I "note down" and save everything I observe. Whether it is while walking in the forest, or in a café, watching my own children, during a ride on the subway or in the evening on the sofa everything hides a secret. And it is this secret of everyday life that I want to explore and understand through sketching. Everyday life with all its encounters and experiences is a treasure full of mysticism. From this treasure one can draw and create infinite.

Of course, the artists may deal with the same topics. This includes our social and political reality, our very banal affairs, and encounters, something that we have already experienced in real life or we have seen and felt. Everything can stimulate the imagination and serve as an initial spark. How to do this in pictures as an artist is an important question. For me, an artist is a serious artist if he only starts with his own imagination and his own reality and translates this into the picture surface with his own technical means (= own style). He does not practice decoration but draws from his own imagination.

Your artworks feature pale nuances, as Jetsam and Flotsam and Painters Coat, as well as bold tones in Butoh Poetry. Moreover, we have particularly appreciated the way they create such enigmatic patterns, com-

A particular aspect of my artistic production

21 4 08

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