Janika Fabrikant
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Janika Fabrikant | |
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| Born | February 5, 1934 Paris, France |
| Nationality | French/Swiss |
| Website | Galerie Alex Schlesinger |
Janika Fabrikant, a French-Swiss painter of urban and industrial landscapes, was born in Paris, France, in 1934.
Career
Janika Fabrikant was born in Paris in 1943, as the thirds child of Israel and Blima Wolkowicz. Presently living in Zurich, she is a prominent French-Swiss painter of the industrial landscape, noted for its specific characteristic of cognitive dissonace.
Career During her experiences in World War II the essence of her future art, namely discrepancy between visual reality and terror, was coined From 1953-1955 she studied painting at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In 1957 she moved Zurich, where she enrolled for a course at the present Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) which she attended from 1982-1985.
Her early artistic development was inspired by visits to the U.S.A. where she experienced a closer affinity with the contemporary art movements to that of the Parisian avant garde, in which she had grown up. She was influence by Edward Hopper and Milton Avery. Milton Avery (1885-1965) (see [1]). During a visit to a recycling plant in Detroit Fabrikant discovered the industrial landscape as her motif. Its rendering in synthetic colours became the hallmark of her art.
Style
Janika Fabrikant’s style defies categorization. The concepts “Visionary Precisionism”[2] and “Expressive Objectivity”[3], were attempted at some stage and then again discarded. Urban landscapes with their battered barrels, monstrous cranes, monumental machines, electricity plants, street façades reminiscent of Giorgio de Chirico, outlined by shadows of invisible electrical cables, towers, bridges and canals became her subjects. Her paintings are rendered on a large scale. In subject they are akin to American Precisionism. Yet the powerful element of irony, of paradox and the monumentalization of the banal, links Fabrikant more closely to Pop Art and the visual world of Sci-fi films.
Her colours which change with every painting, are a fusion of aesthetic harmony and subtle cynicism, of beauty and a delicate malignancy. Her images have an immediate, mesmerizing effect, mainly due to their large size . But the premise of her vision remains her genuine fascination with the subject. This she captures with a camera. The photograph then forms the basis of her composition which she sketches directly onto the canvas. Then she reconstructs it in its three-dimensionality, with a painstaking rendering of light and shadow. After thus conceiving her subject in its rounded completeness, she covers it with a single layer of paint. This layer will assume the dominant mood of the painting, which exudes its special, simulated feeling, removed from nature. Her combination of motif and colour has an effect of tension, impenetrability, instability and a nameless distress. After a first impression of compositional harmony the viewer is drawn into a mysterious sense of dread, of a toxicity between subject and environment, of a cognitive dissonance.
From 1987 up to the present Janika Fabrikant participated in numerous group exhibitions in Switzerland, France, the U.S.A., and one in China. She has had 12 solo exhibitions, mainly in Paris and Zurich during which she sold much of her work to private collectors. Since 2012 she is represented by the Galerie Alex Schlesinger in Zurich.[4]
Notes
- ^ Haskell, Barbara. Milton Avery. New York, Whitney Museum of American Art. Harper & Row, 1982.
- ^ Solo Exhibition at the Galery “Zum grauen Wind” Zurich, 1995.
- ^ Affentranger-Kirchrat, Angelika. Expressive Sachlichkeit. Janika Fabrikant bei Pérez Rojas. Neue Zürcher Zeitung 23. 4. 2007.
- ^ Tödistrasse 48, Zurich, Switzerland. Phone: +41 43 233 92 93.
References
- ANGELI, Bruno. Zwischen Pinsel und Pedalen. Velojournal 3, Zurich, 2011: 61.
- ANONYMOUS under “Diese Woche”. Unbestechliche Wahrnehmung. Tachles, Zurich, 27. 4. 2007.
- BEN YOSEF, Ute. Menschlich fabrizierte Maschinenlandschaften. J. Rundschau Maccabi, Basel, 21. 11. 1991.
- BEN YOSEF, Ute. Janika Fabrikant stellt in Paris aus. J. Rundschau Maccabi, Basel, 17. 9. 1992.
- BERG, Vivianne. Fabriken in Farben, die sich beissen. I. Wochenblatt 48, Zurich, 1.12. 1995.
- ROSENBERG, Gabi. Schönheit als Sinnbild des Bösen. J. Rundschau Maccabi, Basel, 4.1. 1996.
External links
- Clara database of women artist, Library and Research Center of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC.
- european-art.net database, Zurich.
- Janika Fabrikant at the Bollag Galleries 2008-2010, Zurich, Switzerland.
- SIKART Lexicon on art in Switzerland, Swiss Institute for Art Research.
- VISARTE.SWITZERLAND, visual arts association - switzerland, formerly GSMBA (Society for Swiss painters, sculptors and architects).