ROSALIE WERTHEFRONGEL
KOMM MIT

KÖNIG TELEGRAPHENAMT
MONBIJOUSTRASSE 13, 10117 BERLIN

18 OCTOBER – 22 NOVEMBER 2025

OPENING
17 OCTOBER 2025 | 6 – 8 PM

KÖNIG TELEGRAPHENAMT presents KOMM MIT by Rosalie Werthefrongel, the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery.

Rosalie Werthefrongel is a modern pirate: she confidently and effortlessly hijacks classical art history—Renaissance and New Objectivity, Romanticism and Surrealism. Yet these references are transformed, updated, and reinterpreted: Caspar David Friedrich’s ABBEY IN THE OAK WOOD from the early 19th century is suddenly overrun and occupied by a Playmobil knight from the 21st century. With impressive mastery reminiscent of the old masters in terms of technical quality, the artist creates autonomous visual worlds situated in the grey zone between dream and reality, world and counterworld, past and present, reality and virtuality.

The exceptional painterly quality is matched by the extraordinary conceptual development and time-intensive production process, as Rosalie Werthefrongel explains in conversation with the author:

"For my paintings, I collect various objects such as toys, items imbued with memories, found objects, or flea market treasures. I gather cards, photographs, advertising materials, or posters, as well as a large number of digital images. From this diverse collection of images and props, I create models and arrange small stage-like scenes, which I continuously modify, supplement, or reduce. The scenery is then lit accordingly and photographed from various perspectives. Afterwards, I work on digital editing of these photos—cropping, collaging, combining, but also digitally painting over or erasing elements. I am also fascinated by the errors and artifacts that arise during digital image editing, as they open up a new aesthetic dimension. The resulting digital sketch later serves as an important foundation for my painterly execution. This is realized in multiple layers of acrylic and oil paint, combined with drawing elements using colored pencils. Layer by layer, my painting builds up, creating new relationships between the image-in-image elements through various textures, color depths, and densities."

But where does the immense presence of Rosalie Werthefrongel’s visual worlds come from—worlds from which viewers cannot escape, but instead seem to be drawn into the canvas itself? Could it be that classical panel painting, in an era of increasing anonymity in our everyday lives, can develop an analog power and energy that a digital image on a computer or smartphone can never achieve? Moreover, Rosalie Werthefrongel’s paintings continuously raise questions without offering clear answers—answers that viewers must provide and actively work out for themselves. Only in this intense dialogue between image and observer do her works repeatedly find completion again and again.

– Text by Florian Matzner