Kind mit Pudeln

Kind mit Pudeln (Baby with Poodles)

1995/1996

Sculpture, plaster, foil, polyurethane, and paint

When I saw this uncanny piece at SF MOMA, my immediate reaction was laughter followed by an uneasy feeling. I felt estranged from my visceral response, unsure of what I found funny about the scene before me. The repetition of black poodles juxtaposed with a helpless, flailing child in the center seemed downright menacing, and I became suspicious of the malicious quality of my laughter.

Katharina Fritsch's iconic objects, images, installations and sound works seem able to imprint themselves on the mind, as if they were gestalts or things we have seen and experienced before. Hearts, crosses, skulls, bottles and Madonnas are used to play on the fantasies and images that we share, but they are transformed through colour and material into things open and mysterious: latent notions transfigured into primal forms. 

Singular forms are often used repeatedly to create a psychotic proliferation, placed in a strictly gridded tableaux or in perfect concentric circles. Fritsch's work often has unsettling religious or quasi-spiritual associations and is deeply psychological, as if she is attempting to give an image to our deepest fears recovered from the world of myth, religion, cultural history and everyday life.   -whitecube.com