Witalij Frese

Venus II (tile relief)

2020

Witalij Frese was born in 1992 in Russia. He studied painting at the Berlin University of the Arts with Martin Gerwers as well as Gina Burdass and Valérie Favre from 2013. Further, he also spent one semester at the Moscow State Academic Art Institute. In 2019 he completed his studies as master student of Valérie Favre at the Berlin University of the Arts. He was a GOPEA scholarship holder, received the scholarship of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in 2018 and was honoured with the Anna Oppermann Prize in 2016. In 2015 he received the recognition award of the Schulz-Stübner Foundation. In his ceramic works he deals primarily with questions of corporeality and body perception in the context of cultural, political, religious and psychological conditioning. In doing so, he questions our traditional norms of viewing and evaluating the body. Clay as material was something to which Frese came first in touch at the end of his studies. In the tactile experience with the potter’s wheel, he recognised an enriching practice for working with bodily forms. As in his painting, Witalij Frese's ceramics refer to ancient as well as Christian iconography and classical symbols. The artist cleverly and thoughtfully integrates those into his own morphology and thereby allows new possibilities of interpretation for these preconceived symbols. His gender-free and gender-fluid bodily beings are constantly in search of their own selves. They strive to undergo various developments and wish to reinvent themselves. In his portrayals, Frese does not seek definitive classification, but rather emphasises the individual ability to transform the body. Especially in his ceramics that particularly emanate fragility, the artist symbolises the body as an organic shell striving for fulfilment with meaning.