Katharina Fitz (Austria)

Katharina Fitz primarily works in the fields of sculpture and installation, drawing inspiration from industrial processes, architecture, and the hidden aspects of making.

Her practice often begins with an exploration of the spaces that surround us. This involves examining the structures and infrastructures that connect and support, uncovering historical features unique to a place, or considering how people physically activate their environment through motion and touch.

Fitz pays close attention to everyday actions such as opening windows, sliding doors, pressing buttons, or activating mechanisms of push and pull. Repeated over time, these gestures leave subtle traces, scratches, smudges, and impressions that quietly record how we navigate space. These marks become a starting point, translating touch, friction, and repetition into a sculptural language.

Today’s culture strives for optimisation, while our surroundings often feel polished, slick, and impersonal. Fitz sees her work as a counterpoint, a more human representation of life, with its imperfections and provisionality. Her sculptures radiate a raw and unfinished atmosphere, revealing the energy and expressive qualities of materials whilst sharing glimpses of the behind the scenes of construction. She works with texture, weight and the unadulterated hues of materials such as earthy ceramic, plaster, natural latex, unpainted wood and rusty steel.

By drawing parallels between the gestures of the sculptor and those of everyday life, Fitz’s work explores how we perceive and understand the world around us, offering a new reading of how it could be animated, changed, or extended into something else.

Her photographic work looks at issues surrounding the changes, phenomena and structures that we find within the city and how they affect our coexistance within urban space.