Franziska Holstein: HDV

HDV – horizontal, diagonal and vertical – these are construction principles that underlie Franziska Holstein’s serial work.
HDV is also the title of the exhibition, which is Franziska Holstein’s first solo show in Leipzig since 2017.

Her works are created serially and always expose their own process of creation. In the paintings, the material overlaps many times and preserves the traces of the physical and grasping mode of production. This also applies to her abstract prints. Following a fixed system of rules, Franziska Holstein rearranges a recurring form again and again – horizontally, diagonally and vertically. In the repetition and variation, a rhythm is established that makes a meditative mode possible: when the options for action are defined, the head is switched off in active action, inutition and impulse take over.
The exploration of all possible constellations in both painting and graphic art is ultimately based on a preoccupation with oneself. Holstein does not give her works titles, but numbers that exclude ambiguities and deliberately leave no room for broad interpretations.

Franziska Holstein, born in 1978, lives and works in Leipzig. She studied at the Academy of Visual Arts (HGB) with Prof. Arno Rink and graduated in 2008 as a master student of Prof. Neo Rauch. Franziska Holstein received the Sachsenbank Art Prize in 2012 with an accompanying solo exhibition at the Museum der bildenden Künste (MdbK), Leipzig. She has been involved in exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2017), Kunstverein Bad Dürkheim (2017), Kunstverein Bremerhaven (2019) and the “Jetzt! Young Painting in Germany” exhibition (2019/20) which took place at Kunstmuseum Bonn, Museum Wiesbaden, Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz Museum Gunzenhauser and Deichtorhallen Hamburg.