Franziska Nast

Offsetdruck auf Polyester-Gewebe, Vlieseline mit Styropor­kügelchen / offset printing on polyester fabric, fleece linen with styrofoam beads, 150 × 190 cm

From:
Interview, 16.8.2022,
Franziska Nast (FN) & Jutta Mattern (JM)
Kuratorin für Zeitgenössische Kunst / Curator of contemporary art, Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck

translated by Claire Cahm
in
RRRRReality. Franziska Nast, Arp Museum Bhf Rolandseck, Textem Verlag Verlag Hamburg, 2023

(…)

FN
I like to describe the techniques I have acquired over the years as parts of my toolbox. There are always additions and also repetitions that each merge into a narrative of their own. Learning new techniques helps me make decisions or draw parallels at certain points. For example, there are these large paper elements that I interpret as book pages. I am a book designer, so I know how to treat them. However, at the same time dimensions are always shifting as a result. I like to use the example of »Alice in Wonderland«. The idea of being able to shrink or expand infinitely, hence to be able to walk around on the pages of a book, is ingenious. The question of how I can transform techniques so that something different, something unforeseen emerges, is constantly on my mind.

JM
Can you spontaneously think of a term or an image for your exhibition at the Arp Museum – a kind of guiding principle for this space?

FN
›Inframince‹, a term coined by Marcel Duchamp. This implies a space or in-between state or, as Duchamp himself says, »the possible, implying the becoming«, the passage from one to the other. Intellectually as well as physically, because my works oscillate between two- and three-dimensionality. Constantly going back and forth, they repeat themselves, they pick up on each other, spaces are spawning new spaces. There are dimensional shifts, superimpositions, and this certain in-between, inside, outside, the aesthetic opposites, high and low, transience and duration, dream and reality – all this is ›Inframince‹. The term is really great because it describes a state in which the works themselves, the space and eventually also the visitors find themselves.

JM
Indeed, visitors become part of your art. People can have a seat on the large beanbags that you designed so they can take in other works, such as the oversized pullover »Universe Serious Advanced«.

FN
It is important to me that you not only walk through the exhibition, but dwell upon it, sink into it or wrap yourself in a drawing, and that, hence, you not only take on a different perspective, but also a different physical posture. Perhaps a posture of special relaxation.

JM
Just like an all-over, your works in its entirety show a certain current zeitgeist. Tattooing as a theme also plays a role here. You create subtle snapshots of a young contemporary view of society. To what extent does the zeitgeist influence your work?

FN
There are many aspects and you can approach my work from different angles, including the zeitgeist (whatever that is). A fundamental aspect of the zeitgeist is the change in communication: the dilemma of communicating, what and how to share with others – I integrate this into my work. Another point of reference is careers, biographies, narrated memories. It begins with myself – many of my works are autobiographical –, and it continues with people I meet, with encounters I collect and record, stories I hear and connect with. This makes me building collections, which then leads to the concept of the ›archive‹. The archive, of course, is a huge field, but at the core there are the perennial questions: How can I collect something experienced, something remembered? How to sort it? Preserve it? This brings us to books, to tattoos – they all are, in their own way, collection chapters.

JM
How do you fit these individual chapters together?

(…)