01

mistakes happen. mistakes do happen and mistakes are made. you can always resolve not to make any more mistakes, but you know it won’t happen. the mistake is the reason for fear and fear is the mother of violence. in an ideal universe there is no god, because those who are not afraid do not have to explain fear. mistakes don’t happen there. what a nonsensical fallacy. only the lack makes the ideal shine, the good increases in the face of the bad.

02

the wisdom of the elders and their routinely presented if/then mechanics give birth to morally valuable, yet truncated and abbreviating thought patterns. hidden in the infinite sequence of the good/evil duality is a veritable core that, in its subterranean self-importance, cannot comprehend when the rule becomes torture and protection degenerates into a prison. it cannot be emphasized often enough that human benevolence and love may have been the basis of so many norms and approaches, but the sands of time blur everything. the grief of powerlessness lurks in repetition.

03

in franziska klotz’s pictorial thematic duo of figure and space, the breaking of chains that force us to conform to the norm plays no role, and if it does, it is subordinate to a larger narrative. the liberating act is scattered far across the timeline, so it happened a long time ago or is yet to be accomplished – though certainly not tomorrow. the strikingly sharp dividing line between the two topics is remarkable insofar as klotz treats the figure only as female and in her works, which strictly depict an empty and deserted space, the man does not exist either. although he is not given a pictorial image here, his absence is nevertheless noticeable and precisely because the male position is so consistently avoided, the question of why arises.

04

the artist does not make the beginner’s mistake of luring us onto a secret trail with carelessly distributed evidence. the moment of leaving, of stepping out of the picture, is perceptible, but lingers in the room as a breath that is not pursued further. klotz’s portraits of women offer no clear indications of this. in her mostly innocent poses, captured with a white overglow, the restrained, withdrawn, waiting moment predominates. compressed into a glistening, oppressive midsummer sultriness, the moment stretches into infinity. this scenario, borrowed from some french films of the seventies and drifting along obliviously, clearly contrasts on the one hand with the smashed panes of glass, melted traffic lights and other sparsely lit relics by klotz. on the other hand, time dies of boredom in both cases. here, as there, the present is absent, the now is not given shape and the one who tries to set a clock here is unwise. under the bracket of having-been and becoming, the artist forces figure and space into a time-forgotten always. there the power rests, without glory, in eternity.

05

in an ideal universe, the conflicts of rich/poor, young/old and woman/man are amicably negotiated and dispelled to the history books. no epoch has failed to add a three-key piano to this dream. as soon as its sound died away in the room, the noble audience was no longer able to lend its plain ear to even subsequent events. cluttered with the eternally passionate panic of having missed the moment when the needle hits the balloon, the perpetual stumbling becomes an ideal of movement. franziska klotz rather sings along with the three-half note crooner bryan ferry. exactly half a century ago, he purred the following – in every dreamhome a heartache, and every step i take, takes me further from heaven, is there a heaven, i’d like to think so …

martin eugen raabenstein, 2023

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