Premiere of the new version in Germany

No more than 25 visitors per hour are permitted to visit the performance of Franko B. He surrenders himself to the audience face to face. He opens himself up completely to the art and the observer … The artist asked us several times not to publish any information on the production ahead of time. Franko B wants the encounter with him to happen with as little prejudice as possible.

»I work in, across and between the mediums of sculpture, installation, performance, photography and video. I create objects, images and actions that both focus on and frame my raw and exposed body. My work presents the body in its most carnal, existential and essential state, confronting the essence of the human condition in an objectified, vulnerable and seductively powerful form. I believe in beauty, but in a beauty that is not detached from life. My concern is to make the unbearable bearable; to provoke the viewer to reconsider their own understandings of beauty and of suffering – usually we try to avoid such situations in life and cannot face being confronted with our wounds« (Franko B).

»Detractors might say that this is monstrous work, and in a way it is: The Latin root, monstrare, means to show. If a monster is therefore someone who shows himself as much as he is seen by us, then there is a dignified necessity about Franko B’s work« (Louise Gray, The Independent On Sunday, April 2000).

Franko B was born in Milano in 1960, although he has been living in London since in 1979. He studied at the Camberwell School of Art (1986-87) and at the Chelsea College of Art (1987-90), where he graduates as a masters of fine arts. His work – performances, books and exhibitions – have achieved cult status.