John Franzen

John Franzen was born in 1981 in Aachen, GER.
He has a BFA form the Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht, NL.
Working in various disciplines and materials, he focuses on the translation of complex concepts and structures often inspired by his observations of the inner and outer natural world.

Artist statement:

I understand an artist as an scientist, priest and mystic.
His creation is a ritual and model swell. Art is about creation.
It is about being born, creating, growing, transferring, transforming and dying.
This is the topic and the motif.
What ensouled the universe, the elements, the spirits and matter?
Which force enlivens us? Flows through us? Surrounds us?
People call it god, great spirit, Higgs field or dark matter.
As an artist, I am focussing mainly on myself as the source, through empathizing directly throughout and within it by creating art itself.
My artwork is about the inner worldly transcendence. I am striving for the origin, the truth and the source as an human-universe-executer universe energy.


Portfolio:

EACH LINE ONE BREATH

Making of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cL_f5QR29E

A limited edition of 50 freehand drawings per materials, focusing on an artistic and graphic interpretation of evolution through the use of simple drawn lines.

The line is the initiation of any drawing and its fundamental prerequisite.
Coincides with the most basic and transcendental state of life, the perception of breathing as inspiration itself.
Inspiration means in-spiriting, ensouling, from the latin word „inspirationem“ which means "inhaling, breathing-in.

Starting with a straight line, I draw each following sequence by copying the character of the previous. I concentrate on breathing and focus on drawing the successor. Again and once more. Again and again.In the process of drawing, the lines evolve into a kind of logarithmic pattern and layering, steered merely by aberrances and anomalies of human failure in contrast to the precision of a machine.

The resulting artworks are reminiscent of a wave-motion-pattern transporting energy through every element, organism and space-time. Such as for example electromagnetic waves, or the pattern of a DNA-replication.

Lines and layers are like a primordial code or anatomic pattern assembling, arranging and composing the manifestation of energy and matter. Lines are everywhere to find. In waves of sound and light, in water and dunes, growth rings and lines of trees, skin and stratum, tree formations in the forest, the falling rain, the grass luffing in the wind.

In extent, I abstain from any kind of redundant artistic strategies such as figuration or the social, political, economic or cultural meaning within the work. By only focusing on a scientific framework and context, I aspire to reach that very bottom of essentiality I am looking for.

The consecutive synthesis of lines bedded next to each other depicts an allegory to the stratification of constant transmission and fusion of matter. 
The articulation of a non-dualistic cosmos.

Personal description:

When I draw, I draw the void. Not the line.
I focus on the nothingness around the line. The same happens with myself. In the best case; and for this reason I draw, my skin is vibrating. A pulsing tension undulates through my body like an inaudible sound of energy.
The „I“ wanes. I become everything which I am not. My void. It releases an incomparable feeling and awareness of the conjunction of truth and origin.

The motif is the mere moment of creation, and the bare energy, which is flowing through everything and nothing. It is not about what I create, more that I create.
The draw-act as a meditation in which the human-universe-executer and the observer will achieve a inner-worldly transcendence.
In cosmological, philosophical and spiritual point of view, the works are totally realistic illustration of nature.
Not abstract.

Each Line One Breath N. P 4 “Each Line One Breath N. P 4”

Year: 2014
Dimension: 120 x160 cm
Medium: Fineliner on 480 grams high quality paper

Each Line One Breath N. P 5 “Each Line One Breath N. P 5”

Year: 2014
Dimension: 120 x160 cm
Medium: Fineliner on 480 grams high quality paper

Each Line One Breath N. P 11 “Each Line One Breath N. P 11”

Year: 2014
Dimension: 120 x120 cm
Medium: Fineliner on 638 grams high quality paper

Each Line One Breath N. P 12 “Each Line One Breath N. P 12”

Year: 2014
Dimension: 120 x120 cm
Medium: Fineliner on 638 grams high quality paper

Each Line One Breath N. A 22 “Each Line One Breath N. A 22”

Year: 2014
Dimension: 125 x 250 cm
Medium: Permanent fineliner on aluminium composite sheet.

Each Line One Breath N. A 25 “Each Line One Breath N. A 25”

Year: 2014
Dimension: 100 x 150 cm
Medium: Permanent fineliner on aluminium composite sheet.

Each Line One Breath N. A 18 “Each Line One Breath N. A 18”

Year: 2014
Dimension: 100 x 126 cm
Medium: Permanent fineliner on aluminium composite sheet.

Each Line One Breath N. A 17 “Each Line One Breath N. A 17”

Year: 2014
Dimension: 100 x150 cm
Medium: Permanent fineliner on aluminium composite sheet.

Each Line One Breath N. A 27 “Each Line One Breath N. A 27”

Year: 2014
Dimension: 121 x 41 cm
Medium: Permanent fineliner on aluminium composite sheet.

Each Line One Breath N. A 28 “Each Line One Breath N. A 28”

Year: 2014
Dimension: 121 x 41 cm
Medium: Permanent fineliner on aluminium composite sheet.