Franziska Koch: tingling fingers

Franziska Koch’s works are gestural, direct and immediately evoke emotions.

Koch applies the oil paint to the canvas with quick, energetic movements – layer by layer. She works wet on wet, with no time for a drying process or for overthinking situations. What is depicted must be transferred to the canvas immediately.

This approach makes the works vibrate, allows us to immerse ourselves in the relief of the impasto materiality, follow the brushstroke, catch our breath briefly on the glazed surfaces and then return to the vibrant colours. Finally, we take another step back to grasp what is depicted: what we see are painterly snapshots of intimate encounters or social interactions.

The ambivalence between pastosity and glaze not only sets pictorial accents on the canvas that stimulate the narrative, but also blurs the binary gender boundaries. The focus is on the (purely) interpersonal moment, which deals with themes of closeness, connection, alienation, queer identities and sexuality.

Franziska Koch supposedly gives us an insight into the emotional world of other characters. However, what really happens between the characters is left open and up to our own interpretation.

[Text Laura Gerstmann, 2024]

Franziska Koch (*1991 in Nuremberg) lives and works in Leipzig. Since 2017 she has been studying painting at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig under Christoph Ruckhäberle, Franziska Holstein and Henriette Grahnert, among others.Franziska Koch is expected to complete her studies with a diploma in 2024.

Her work has already been shown in Berlin, Leipzig, Toulouse and Athens, among others. Koch has received the following scholarships: artist residency at Jardin Rouge, Marrakesh, Morocco, 2025; the scholarship of the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts Salzburg, 2023; and an artist residency at Gutshof Biesenthal, Culterim Gallery, 2023.