My Art could be labelled as "Neo Pop" or "Urban Street".
It is unstructured and infuses many different forms and applications.
The Mixed Media style is made up of collage, burnish, stencil, spray, oil, acrylic, and is applied in many forms and variations.
Franz developed his personal style of pop urban art several years ago after travelling through Spain where he was influenced by an enormous amount of Street Art.
The style of his art is a combination of Street meets Pop art and Franz usually pays homage to a musical icon of the past. This involves pulling together old icons/badges/memories of that particular time.
Its not unsimilar than grabbing things off the top of a dumpster and re vamping their concepts.
Today with Pop Art there are many more utensils for artists to put together new art. For example computer and printers prove invaluable for research and fast representation of a new concept. And of course collage is a fabulous way to re invent something.
The grungy look Franz applies to his work is obtained by the method of burnishing images onto the canvas. With burnishing there is an accidental outcome and the artwork becomes organic.
That combined with paint splatters, layering upon layering, crayon, an ordained colour palette, words, newspaper cut-outs, reconstructed images, icons and logos, a balance eye and a concept, creates his output.
In our globalised culture image scraping and cut/copy/paste commands are efficient methods of artistic appropriation. As such they are powerful means of participating in popular culture.
We're all post-internet which has the legacy of being able to draw on a wealth of art and history, thrown on the scrapheap of the past, and now can manipulate images to present a new aesthetic.
Franz's early years were engaged in window dressing, then he completed Architecture at RMIT, and in the 80s, he hand painted Australian t-shirts and windcheaters. The following years he ran three art poster/print retail outlets. So he has always had a tangible engagement with art.
His musical interest probably are due to the fact he worked as a DJ in Melbourne throughout his twenties and played in a local band.
Franz believes that music is always connected to this day. His art evokes memories for the baby boomer's and kids of today are attuned to the super icons that are brought to the iTunes table engaging a broad audience from the teenager to the seventy/eighty year old.
The popularity of this art has been tested in several art exhibitions and received a lot of notice at the Basel Art Show in Miami in 2018.
References to the 1950s when he immigrated to Australia from war torn Germany as a small boy are present.
There are strong glimpses of his Aussie background as he assimilated into the Australian society of that time, where he attended state schools in Port Melbourne and later Richmond, both blue collared working suburbs and probably accounts for Franz's reflection of the urban face of Australia.
Enjoy.