Hans Gercke The Familiar and the Strange

In: Bergeversetzen, Heidelberger Kunstverein 2002

...."FRANEK´s pictures are not only about the fatefull interrelationship between man and nature. They are at least as much - and the one determinesthe other - about the possibility of the impossibility, of the possibility - or necessity, or perhaps even facility - of overcoming boundaries, of opening doors, of freeing oneself, passionately, from constraints and encrustations. To experience the foreign, the different not as a threat but as a challenge and a mutuality enriching possibility for encounter - an uncommonly topical theme in view of a world situation where war and violence have been placed back on the agenda ofthe new millennium with macabre enthusiasm and, sadly, undeniably programmatic doggedness. Meanwhile, FRANEK paints pictures of hope such as Bergeversetzen (Movingmountains) or Eslebedieliebe (Longlivelove) - and certainly not just the platonic variety. She paints "happenings of the times, not topical events, but that which has always been here: people, animals, plants, minerals, the elements - the universe. "I am concerned, " she says, "with the things in our time that are timeless"...