Frauke Dannert

Frauke Dannert (b.1979 in Herdecke, Germany) lives and works at Cologne. Dannert studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and at Goldsmiths College in London. 

The genesis of Dannert’s practice lies in her interest in the architectural space and the medium of collage. These collages manifest themselves on paper, wall paintings, carpet inlays, curtains, projections, films and photographs. Through this she dissects architecture, examining it as to its sculptural potential, pointedly heightening particular features or else subverting preconceived structural assumptions. By altering the scale and shapes of the building materials depicted, Dannert produces creations that oscillate between the organic and the architectonic, illusion and reality.

Within her collage practice Dannert creates the initial compositions and then replicates them using a photocopier. The loss in the clarity and other nuances created by this process consciously transforms the original image. By reducing the photocopies to black, white and grey tones she distances the works from the original material reality. After duplication, Dannert further determines the shapes and thus the greater degree of alienation of the original motifs. She continues these optical illusions in her installations by overlaying the existing architecture with photographic architectural fragments, thus alienating spaces and the viewers experience of the space.

Her work can be found in many institutional collections including: 

Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf; Kunstsammlung Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt; Märkisches Museum Witten; Sammlung der Stadtsparkasse, Düsseldorf; Landesbank Hessen Thüringen, Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf; Sammlung Kunst aus NRW (Kornelimünster), Aachen