Matthias Franz: die dünne Haut der Zivilisation — Matthias Franz

In these new works, Matthias Franz returns to nostalgia as a means of storytelling. With die dünne Haut der Zivilisation, Franz gestures towards the ways and means by which nostalgia – contained within our understanding of the past - might be rendered as a way of comprehending our present. The exhibition title, which translates to ‘the thin skin of civilization’, points to Franz’s investigation into the principles and ideals behind civilized society. Drawing upon various literary and textual sources, he uses painting as a tool to visualize and question the world around us.

Ambiguous landscapes and enigmatic interiors feature in many of Franz’s paintings. They are scenes, unstated, where subjects contest for focus. Within these uncanny spaces, figures we would often see in normal civilized environments are displaced, drifting across vast succumbing oceans or situated amongst mysterious jungle foliage. In die Aufklärung , cloaked figures are depicted floating on a yellow ocean; hues of turquoise and burnt umber patinate the canvas, as they clutch hold of lights guiding their way in a multitude of directions. In the center, above an archaic-looking passenger boat, a hovering figure dressed in a Napoleonic uniform salutes upwards, levitating in the air as if suspended in some kind of cosmic veneration. The title, which translates as ‘Enlightenment’ , stands in tension with the autocratic figure who embodies military expansion. Through this paradox, Franz alludes to the power dynamics that have shaped the past and suggests a broader sense of societal disenchantment that remains unsettlingly relevant today.

For Franz, paintings act as portals, opening up the space to connect things, whilst questioning what we already know. In Hamlet , a typewriter perched upon a table with a piece of paper flopping comically over the top alludes to questions of creative authorship. A reference to the famous 16th-century play written by English playwright William Shakespeare, Franz selects his most feigned and mad character, Hamlet, brandishing his name as an apparent logo on the typewriter. Fraught with revenge, Hamlet’s perceived madness gave him a free rein to speak truths that would be otherwise heavily scrutinized were he visibly sane. In a comical play on this, the almost broken typewriter embellished with the name of Hamlet illustrates how truths can emerge in madness and visual translation, generally speaking, as both a creative and literary process, inevitably distorts meanings.

The question that arises, then, is how painting can serve as a means of generating a relational search for that which connects seemingly disparate things. Franz's paintings thrive on the collision of opposing motifs and emotional states, distinguished by their ability to propel us back and forth between past and present, and into a surreal dreamscape where nothing is ever quite as it seems.

About the artist

Throughout his early career, Franz has developed a captivating style of organic representation where viewpoints in his paintings are refracted, obscured, and through this brought closer to life. Directly confronting the complexity of contemporary existence, he approaches the medium of painting as a venture in witnessing and recording his time.

In his paintings, muted earth tones are contrasted with shadowy outlines and full primary hues that comprise invented architectural spaces or uncanny perspectives. The pulling and pushing tension within his brushstrokes captures the sensation of heavy, enlarged forms giving way to more delicate arrangements, infused with the imbalanced weight and proportions one would find in a dream.

Franz is careful to distance the viewer’s perspective from the interior of his paintings. He describes this process as “clinging to the inherent depth and secret of things.” Buried within his images the viewer searches for the face of a figure or the contours of the skyline. Amongst the seemingly unconnected locations pictured throughout his oeuvre he depicts the environment of the academy, onstage performances, and beds full of dreaming bodies. Throughout these scenes, the motif of collective longing is projected into a broader social context, as are suggestions of detachment, inaction, and rebelliousness.

The artist’s early influences include American painters such as Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden, while he embraces the expressive grandeur inherited from his continental European predecessors and contemporaries, German painters such as Martin Kippenberger, Albert Oehlen, and Daniel Richter.

Matthias Franz (b. 1984, Ilmenau, DE) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2019, where he was a student of Daniel Richter. Selected exhibitions include claim no easy victories , GRIMM, London (UK); Sensory Dialogue , with Daniel Richter, Yi Space, Hangzhou (CN); Birds Sing the Echoes of Fragmentation , GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL); The Moon and I , GRIMM, New York, NY (US); AIR 2020 / 2021 , Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna (AT); Salon des Nutzlosen , GRIMM, New York, NY (US); and Condition Humaine , GRIMM, New York, NY (US).