Katharina Fritsch
After having studied history and art history at the University of Münster, Katharina Fritsch, born 1956 in Essen (Germany), studied from 1977 in the class of Fritz Schwegler at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf until 1984. Since the mid-1980s, she has exhibited regularly both at home and abroad: at the Kunsthalle Basel, for instance, in 1988; her first US solo exhibition took place at Dia Art Foundation in New York in 1993. Fritsch represented Germany at the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995, followed by an important solo exhibition in 1996 at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, which went on to the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel in 1997. Retrospectives were held in 2001 at Tate Modern in London, in 2002 at the K21 in Düsseldorf, and in 2009 at the Kunsthaus Zürich, and subsequently exhibited at Deichtorhallen in Hamburg. In 2013 her contribution Hahn/Cock to the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square caused a sensation. Katharina Fritsch taught as Professor of Sculpture at the Kunstakademie Münster from 2001 to 2010, and since 2010 she has held a professorship at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the town where she lives.

Alexej Koschkarow
After having studied for two years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Minsk, Alexej Koschkarow, born 1972 in Minsk (Belarus), went to Germany to study with Fritz Schwegler at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1993 to 1999. In his final year, he was invited by Katharina Fritsch for a collaborative exhibition entitled “Damenwahl” at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. The following year, Koschkarow invited about thirty friends to the Malkasten art space in Düsseldorf: Tortenschlacht (2001) is the video documentation of this event, during which the elegantly dressed guests started to throw cream pies provided for this purpose. More solo and group exhibitions followed, among others in 2001 at Haus Fürstenberg, Sammlung Ackermans at Xanten, at the Galerie Jablonka Luhn in Cologne in 2002, 2003 and 2005, and “Situation Comedy: Humor in Recent Art” at the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, also in 2005. His works were part of the 10th Triennale der Kleinplastik in Fellbach in 2007, and in 2008 “Take Me There (Show Me The Way)” at the Haunch of Venison in New York. In 2009, Viafarini in Milan presented “Checkpoint Charly”. Alexej Koschkarow lives and works in New York.

The group of figures Puppen (Dolls, 2016) by Katharina Fritsch assumes a luminous presence in the central room of the Chamber Piece with an intense shade of yellow. The proportions and the round volumes are taken from a specific model: small corn-husk dolls produced in Eastern Europe, typically as souvenirs or nativity figures. In an elaborate working process, Fritsch has enlarged them and reduced them to the essentials. Converted to monochrome plasticity, any intimation of organic character gives way to an artificial presence. Through their specific attributes – aprons, headscarves, and utensils – the figures open up a context evoking traditional, rural, and domestic realms.

Diagonally opposite Katharina Fritsch’s Puppen (Dolls, 2016) is Alexej Koschkarow’s ceramic sculpture Kalter Ofen (Cold Oven, 2016), modelled in equal measure on a cosy tiled stove and an exploding hand grenade. Like a lenticular image, both identities are simultaneously perceivable even though the associated functions have been negated.

Through the opened door of the stove, a smouldering fire can be made out underneath the black, charred logs, but without generating any warmth, just as the grenade’s explosion is flash-frozen in white glazed ceramic and does not continue its outward trajectory.

Off to the left, a narrow door opening leads to the smallest of the chambers. The sculpture Sarg (Coffin, 2016) by Katharina Fritsch occupies the space. Though instantly identifiable as an object with a specific function, the prototypical simplification causes it to be perceived first and foremost as a constructivist object made of geometric forms and monochrome planes of colour, with its meaning receding in importance. The non-textured surfaces are matte without any reflection, as is typical of Fritsch’s sculptures. The intensive contrast of colours could hardly be more different from the heaviness usually associated with a coffin and from black as the colour of mourning. Remarkably present yet materially removed, Fritsch has created a work full of explosive force, which is unleashed in the intimate setting of the Chamber Piece.

In the manner of an eclectic architectural model, the sculpture Das was keinen Namen hat (Which Has No Name, 2016) in the right room of the Chamber Piece is composed of several, in fact incompatible elements. A massive bunker with embrasures forms the central structure with an opening that recalls the gaping maw of a rearing cobra, for example. Compared to this “upper body” – interpreting the sculpture as an animated creature – the foundation comes across as downright playful with a spiral-shaped shaft and two intertwined staircases. As the crowning element above, athletic females stand in a heroic pose with almost masculine facial features, clad in nothing but martial steel helmets. As an ambiguous personification, albeit one trivialized to the status of a pin-up, the he-women embody a type of female that could hardly be more opposed to the domestic, motherly image of the corn-husk dolls.

In Schtetl (Shtetl, 2012), constructed from countless small pieces of wood, two dense rings of houses line a central town square. The rural impression is reinforced by the title with its reference to a historic type of Jewish settlement, the shtetl. Prevalent throughout Eastern Europe for centuries, these traditional Jewish village communities came to an abrupt end amidst the horrors of the Second World War. Yet long before then, the shtetl had found its way into literature and art as the – occasionally idealized – epitome of a real and true way of life. With the axe prominently placed in the centre of the village, Alexej Koschkarow gives these ambivalences a compelling form in his sculpture. With the simple, yet very precisely deployed material – having reused wood from the floor of his studio in a Hasidic neighbourhood of Brooklyn – he also establishes a link to Jewish emigration to the USA.

The sculptures are bordered on both sides by graphite frottage works on large-format canvases. Referring to these works as “smearings”, the artist uses a rubbing technique to transfer the surfaces of architectural elements, such as doors or façade sections, as well as publicly accessible sculptures onto canvas in original scale. Converted into two-dimensionality, the rubbings show dusky, shadow-like forms. The eagle motif of Bellevue (2014) is taken from stone sculptures in New York.

Hung opposite is the upright-format Höllentor (Gates of Hell, 2012). The title recalls Auguste Rodin’s somber bronze work The Gates of Hell (1880–1917), but the rubbing is actually from the doorway of a historic building in New York. With the smearings, Koschkarow blurs clear-cut categorizations and sharpens the viewer’s eye for the overtones associated with a motif.

Nevertheless, the concept of Zita – Щapa, the coordination of the individual works, and their elaborate execution are based on an intensive ongoing exchange. The artists are interested in the tension between their distinctive working methods. Fritsch’s objects come across as a coherent whole and are immediately recognizable, while the immersion in Koschkarow’s works takes more time due to their multipartite nature. From the idea to the execution, the works of both artists arise in constant confrontation with questions of material, form, and colour – a differentiated creative process characterized by the precise deployment of elaborate artistic techniques.