Helga Franz

Habitats here denote economically initiated interconnections that at the same time demand mental localisations in a structure that consists of conditions and relationships that cannot be separated and can only exist in this way. All three objects could also stand alone, but due to their materials, make, dimensions and colours they form a recognisable spatial unit.

 

"Legume Recorder Black", 2022

The iron rotor of the legume recorder black moves a black-filled glass bowl that harbours very specific movements and sounds. Legumes are staple foods of billions of people and valuable protein donors, with the oldest archaeological finds dating back 10,000 years. They can rival cereals such as emmer in their cultivation tradition - even the cultivation of rice was only started about 7,000 years ago.

 

"Honey diver bigelb", 2022

Cradling two jars of lighter and darker crops, the honey diver bigelb performs its counter-vertical movements. A bee worker produces about a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime - 30 kilos therefore require about 6,000 bee lives. While honey is based on the interaction of animal and plant life, turnip greens are entirely of plant origin.

 

"Cera flava trichromatic", 2022

Horizontally, the cylinders of Cera flava trichromatic, reminiscent of a geological drill core, rest on curved armoured glass in a triple compound. The precious beeswax, a mixture of esters and acids formed by bees from their wax glands, which gets its yellow colour from the carotene dissolved in the pollen oil, has been adulterated for centuries for reasons of profit. It is analysed by means of chromatographic procedures, also to prevent adulterated waxes used in beekeeping from depriving a bee colony of its existence. But this is only one of countless dangers to which bees are exposed.

HELGA FRANZ has been realising international projects with transdisciplinary collaborations as an artist, author, photographer and pilot since 1987. For her work, she has received a number of grants and recognitions as well as awards in competitions with realisations of interactive, kinetic and static designs. From 1993-2001 she was head of the sculpture/objects department at the University of Leipzig.

She is active in non-university educational work as a seminar leader and art mentor as well as a juror and procedural coordinator for competitions and is involved in expert commissions and advisory boards for art in public space. Her publications from the self-publishing house visuell.virtuell and other publishers are listed in the German National Library.

She completed her academic studies at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe, the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology M.I.T. in Cambridge and the Akademie für Digitale Medien Berlin. She is a member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund and the Gesellschaft für künstlerische Forschung in Deutschland, among others.

 

www.helga-franz.de