At the invitation of the Kunstmuseum Heidenheim, artist Zohar Fraiman developed a dialogue between her own works and those of Pablo Picasso from the museum’s collection for the exhibition “Travelling without Moving.”

The idea for the project arose because the painter takes up motifs and Picasso’s cubist approach in many of her more recent paintings, but reinterprets them from a contemporary, female perspective. In her art, art-historical classics meet motifs from current pop culture, are equipped with smartphones, or are otherwise catapulted into the fast-paced present. This approach gives the cubist idea of “simultaneity” a new meaning. This is also referenced in the title “Travelling without Moving,” which was borrowed from a song by the band Jamiroquai and also gives its name to a central piece in the exhibition. In various paintings, the Israeli-born artist explores how our relationship with mobile phones allows us to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. We are captivated by breathtaking images of distant travel destinations. Thanks to social media, idealized images of well-known and lesser-known vacation destinations are omnipresent and awaken the desire to visit exactly the same places and take exactly the same photos of ourselves. However, the projected dream image usually does not come true. Firstly, because the idyll was staged; secondly, because we research photos, restaurants, and places in advance on our cell phones and consume them digitally; and thirdly, because the authentic experience gives way to the urge to prove to friends, colleagues, and family that we are having a perfect time with selfies, stories, and status updates.

But even without actually traveling physically, we move from place to place in digital space; we swipe, scroll, and click and are, as the artist puts it, “trapped in a cycle of doomscrolling, physically immobile but mentally exhausted.”

This journey without movement takes on another form in the exhibition. While exploring the collection in Heidenheim, Fraiman was fascinated to discover that there is a car named after the famous artist and bearing his signature: the Citroën Xsara Picasso. Inspired by the question of whether it would also be possible for a contemporary artist to have their own car, she developed the “Fraiman.” Of course, in keeping with the exhibition concept, this car is not actually mobile. Instead, visitors can immerse themselves in the artist’s color cosmos and make themselves comfortable in the two-dimensional car. A fan simulates the wind, and painted palm trees evoke the feeling of a drive through Mediterranean climes. The latter are a reference both to Picasso’s native Spain and to the palm-lined boulevards of Hollywood, the symbol of the glamorous film industry, where the real and the imaginary worlds meet.