Katharina Fengler’s work mesmerizes in its dauntless use of color. It has a dazzling, absolute presence – a lure that is hard to withdraw from. As part of her large airbrushed works, foreground becomes background as colors fade into each other on the wrinkled, structured Tyvek that she employs. In these swaths of merging colors diverging elements surface – scribbles, brushstrokes, cut-out images – all equally hovering on a plane with no perspective. In their different materialities, these gestures range from awkward and dripping, to sly and shy, to forceful and assertive. Breaking open the purely abstract, the images included and the titles given make reference to contemporary culture – current forms of lifestyle connected to nutrition, make-up, or gender roles; the changing obsessions with the body induced by consumer culture.

[Melanie Bühler, freelance curator/researcher, Amsterdam, 2016]

SHE SHED is Katharina Fengler’s first solo show as solo artist in Germany. She presents new large-scale paintings on Tyvek as well as mixed media salt dough objects. The title of the show is a neologism referring to little garden houses designed especially by and for women as counterparts to the slightly more popular 'man cave' or 'mantuary'. Without any aspiration of wanting to depict ’she sheds', Fengler adopts the term metaphorically to challenge the expectations that are (still) bound to assigned work, gender and lifestyle norms. 

Katharine Fengler - SHE SHED,
Wahres Rittershaus, June 4 - July 15
www.warhusrittershaus.com

Contribution by Domenico de Chirico.