All Photos By Gail

I’ve been a fan  of artist German artist Katharina Fritsch and her oeuvre of hyper-realistic (and often surreal) sculptures since I first  met These Guys. This past May, I wandered into Matthew Marks Gallery and was happily supposed to find a selection of her sculptues on view!  Having experienced many family camping trips a small child, I was particularly entranced by Auto und Wohnwagen / Car and Caravan (1079 / 2026). Sure, it looks like a perfectly ordinary road-trip scene — a sleek black car pulling a little white caravan. But this is definitely not your average family vacation.


Caravan Detail

Fritsch has taken these familiar objects and transformed them into something quite surreal. The car is glossy, imposing and completely black, while the caravan behind it is stark white, creating a striking visual contrast. Both are rendered with the immaculate, almost dreamlike perfection that has become a hallmark of Fritsch’s work.

According to the gallery, the physical form of the sculpture — a black car towing a white camper — was directly modeled after a child’s toy car and caravan set (specifically resembling a miniature Mercedes car and camper). By blowing the toy up to a monumental, 30-foot life-size scale, Fritsch plays with human perception, turning a familiar object of childhood nostalgia into something eerie and destabilizing.

The idea actually dates back to 1979, when Fritsch created a small model of the scene while she was a student. Decades later, she revisited it on a monumental scale, turning what once resembled a toy or tabletop model into a full-size sculpture. Full size renditions of each of the maquettes in the above collection were represented the gallery.

Installation View

That change in scale is what makes the work so fascinating. A car and caravan are about as familiar and everyday as objects get, yet Fritsch’s treatment makes them feel oddly mysterious — like props from a dream in which everything looks recognizable but nothing quite makes sense. Sometimes all it takes to make the ordinary extraordinary is to change the scale and remove familiar color details.

Photographed at Matthew Marks Gallery in the Chelsea Gallery District.