Artist Statement

Defekte Wahrscheinlichkeit
Monika Rinck


Jutta-Cuny-Franz
Memorial Award
Helmut Ricke



[mis]perception and [dis]place[ment]

In her objects, installations and photography Claudia von Funcke aims to undermine spatial and perceptual certitude. She documents, analyses and dissects urban spaces, often unspectacular and derelict ones, reassembling them in unfamiliar ways.

She focuses on the process of the transitory modern city where the subject is forced to inhabit a montage space. The city’s complex structures, layouts and meanings are presented as provisional arrangements, overlapping layers of history in constant permutation.

Building materials such as steel, glass and fibre board, high tech materials, photographs and everyday objects discarded by the city take on abstract
geometric forms which penetrate, distort and fractionalize the space around them. The objects and installations themselves are then further destabilized by the superimposition of light and projections.

Through cropping and the choice of detail and fragment in her photography, she presents the conventional perception of reality as just one option amongst many: perspectives are fragile constructions constantly subject to acceleration, deterioration and reinterpretation.

Funcke’s objects and installations are created within the influence of the diverse fields of perceptual theory, brain research, molecular biology, geophysics and contemporary architecture. Illusion, delusion, infinite mutability – material and immaterial constructs intermingle and become indistinguishable. One is forced into psychological realms where the dynamics of seeing are disrupted and inner safeties are lost.