Katharina Fritsch first showed her work in the United States in 1994, at the Dia Center for the Arts. There she debuted Rattenkönig (Rat king), her now famous work in which 12-feet-tall black rodents face outward in a circle, towering over the viewer, their tails bound together in a giant knot. Like all Fritsch’s work, Rattenkönig is simultaneously seductive and unnerving. She often transforms quotidian objects or ordinary looking figures into something new and strange, through repetition and manipulation of scale and color. Her sculptures are the result of a time-consuming process: a piece is usually molded by hand, then cast in plaster, reworked, and then cast again in polyester.
Katharina Fritsch, at Matthew Marks Gallery
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