Fly Katharina Fritsch

• A typical animal sculpture by the artist, at times familiar from everyday life, at times uncomfortably alien • Through a sophisticated shift in scale, the inconspicuous insect is transformed into a menacing figure • Katharina Fritsch was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2022 ‘The Fly’ is one of Katharina Fritsch’s characteristic depictions of animals, which also include her famous sculptures of rats and mice. On the surface, the insect is an unremarkable creature familiar to us all. Yet it is associated with a wide range of ideas: summer, heat or even transience. It is precisely this ambivalence that characterises Katharina Fritsch’s overall body of work. She frequently draws on motifs that are deeply rooted in our collective visual memory. By isolating the subject, its precise design and, above all, the disorienting alteration of scale, she strips it of its casual, everyday nature. In the case of the fly, she enlarges an insect measuring just a few millimetres to approximately 25 centimetres. As a result, the insect acquires a presence it does not possess in reality; the revulsion and unease that the insect is capable of evoking are intensified by the enlargement. The object and the ambivalent feelings associated with it are equally scalable. The artist demonstrates this impressively in her monumental installation, the ‘Rat King’ from 2003 (Schaulager Basel). Katharina Fritsch is one of the most significant contemporary artists; in 2022, she was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for her life’s work. | 1956 Essen | Zeitgenössische Kunst | Skulptur/Objekt/Multiple | Nummer: 26x2498 | Provenance: Galerie 20.21, Essen; Sammlung Olbricht, Deutschland, 2003 bei Vorgenannter erworben.

Estimate:£13,351.44

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