Sebastian Fritzsch

Kammer

Zeichenwälder und Wunderkammern

Sebastian Fritzsch (b. Cologne, 1977; lives and works in Odenthal and Cologne) gathers signifiers in sprawling installations, ink drawings, paintings, and objects, condensing his material to create unique instruments that shed light on collection-building as a practice and the way it has changed from antiquity to the present. In a nod to the historic cabinets of curiosities, which juxtapose “objects” without prejudice as to their nature and relative value, Fritzsch employs this epistemic apparatus to investigate the mental collection of images and experiences he sets out in his works. His ink drawings undertake an expedition in search of nature’s oddities in flora and fauna, which he aggregates on the paper. Rather than in naturalism and the mimetic depiction of the found objects, the artist’s focus is on their graphic transformation into signifiers.

The book surveys Fritzsch’s extensive oeuvre, which challenges authoritative structures of knowledge and principles of reason. With essays by Peter Ulrich Hein, Jan Ortwig, Julia Reich, and Arne Reimann.