Woman with Dog (Frau mit Hund)

Katharina Fritsch makes meticulous reproductions of everyday objects, rendering them unfamiliar through extreme shifts in scale and either alluring or repellent color choices. Indeed, saturated and nonreflective coats of color lend her sculptures a strong sense of otherworldliness. “I always call the starting point [for a sculpture] a vision,” she has said. “I’ll be in a tram or driving a car and I suddenly get a picture in my mind. Something completely normal turns into a miracle—something I’ve never seen before. Simple things you see every day turn into something strange, something alien.” Woman with Dog is clearly scaled up— enormously so—from a small figurine made of shells, as one might find in a seaside souvenir shop.