Contemporary German artist Katharina Fritsch is known for producing multiples--serially produced objects that she creates in mostly unlimited editions. Concerned with exploring the nature of human perception and experience, Fritsch makes instantly recognizable objects strange by alterations of scale, color, or material, or by excessive repetition.

Each multiple in this display case is based on a mass-produced object popular in Germany. The conical-shaped wall vase, for example, is based on those used to decorate graves in cemeteries, while the small cat is actually a shoe scraper. The Madonna is cast from a small plaster statuette found in a tourist shop in Lourdes, a French city to which pilgrims come in hopes of witnessing a miracle. And though many of her multiples have autobiographical significance, Fritsch also intends them to have a more general, collective meaning, both as symbols of popular culture and commodity and as agents in triggering our own memories.