John Franzen is a German-born artist whose work is highly autobiographical, often creating deep, violent gashes through an otherwise immaculate, armored surface. He describes his early unique upbringing in several communal living experiments as neglectful and leaving him without a sense of social stability. Franzen marks this as a genesis of his artistic practice and the source of a dark inrospection that flows as a quiet undercurrent in his work. Despite this early period, Franzen found a more supportive environment in his teenage years at the Robert Schumann Technical Institute in Beliguim where his art took a primary role in his life, and where he first began to work sculpturally. Now, after a fegree from Art Academy in Maastricht, Franzen views his work alternately as relics of ritualized performance, the byproducts of meditation, and the fruits of an increased spirituality coming to the fore in his later life.
