Franziska Baumgartner is interested in initiating, observing and recording "natural" or "artificial" processes of transformation - from emergence to transformation to degeneration - sometimes even to the decay of matter. She pursues an artistic practice that on the one hand offers her proximity to scientific methods and at the same time leaves room for the unforeseen and the accidental. She is particularly interested in moments of deformation and alienation, which, precisely mapped or preserved, produce something independent with seductive visual, haptic or acoustic qualities. Specifically, she uses and mixes organic and inorganic substances, solids and liquids, edible and chemical ingredients or sound, creating inherently dynamic experimental arrangements that exploit the self-organising potential of matter. Based on her observations and recordings, she creates sensory spaces of experience in expansive, ephemeral or multimedia installations that open up diverse possibilities of association in the field of tension between microcosm and macrocosm, organic and artificial, attraction and repulsion as well as wild growth and control. With her works, she tries to initiate questions in the complex structure of the human body, material, technology and environment, as well as to stage the immediate and poetic power of the activity and effectiveness of matter, beyond an anthropocentric world view and capitalist exploitation economy.

Franziska Baumgartner (*1987 in Solothurn, lives and works in Basel) completed her Master of Arts in Art Education at the ZHdK in 2012. Since her studies, she has worked as a freelance artist, art educator (Kunsthalle Basel, Helvetia Kunstsammlung, FHNW, °Kläranlage°) and curator (Tom Bola, Ausstellungsraum Klingental). She is regularly represented in exhibitions, has been on studio scholarships in Berlin (2018), Paris (2021) and Guarda (2022) and has received several awards, including the Förderpreis Bildende Kunst of the Kuratorium für Kulturförderung Solothurn (2015), a work grant from the Kunstkredit Basel-Stadt (2020) and the Art Prize of the Cristina Spoerri Foundation (2020).