Born 1970
Lives and works in Berlin
Katja Strunz’s constructions inhabit space in a dramatic way by combining formal geometric elements with experiments in texture, finish and subtle colour and a poetic allusion to the past by creating an illusion of time passing and the conception of history. In their irregularity Katja Strunz’s works bear traces of the past, and an intentional imperfection. Although Katja Strunz constructs her wall and floor based sculptures in a manner that clearly makes a reference to Minimalism she has rejected the precise finish associated with Minimalism in favour of a rougher more hand made presence. As an assemblage of elements her Memory Wall sculptures appear to travel across the wall in an irregular motion that evokes the rhythmic progression of time. The steel cubes in Memory Wall (7), 2007 are dented and in a state of dissolution as they appear to be drifting apart
Katja Strunz’s works depart from the rigidity of geometry to offer a conceptual exploration of the development of memory and the cyclic nature of history. The vision of Malevich and Ell Lissitzky and the iconoclastic optimism of the Constructivist revolution is adapted by Katja Strunz to express a concrete yet poetic reminder that within the actual space and the illusion of time that these works establish, lies an additional realm of dreams in which memory informs the identity of the final work.
Alongside Anselm Reyle, a close contemporary with whom she studied and once had an adjacent studio, Katja Strunz shares an interest in the appropriation of some of Modernism’s archetypal forms and ideas. Her neo-Constructivist wall sculptures have a physicality and concern with formal complexity that has been off the agenda for many contemporary artists who have considered the art object at best insignificant or irrelevant since the high point of Minimalism on the 1960s.