LOS ANGELES, CA.- Regen Projects is presenting Land and Sea, the first solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based painter Silke Otto-Knapp to be held at the gallery.
Known for her crepuscular landscapes and figurative tableaux that engage with the history of painting, Otto-Knapp’s signature style employs subtle washes of watercolor, slowly built up and removed layer by layer on the surface of the canvas to create form. Each carefully constructed composition embodies distinct temporalities and moods evoked through a juxtaposition of flatness and luminosity achieved through painterly chroma and surface texture. Drawing inspiration from a myriad of sources and subject matter including historical figures, landscapes and seascapes, poetry, modern dance choreography, theatre design, and textiles, her work engages both abstraction and representation, simultaneously creating and erasing form on the picture plane.
The exhibition presents six watercolor paintings that wrap around the walls of the gallery like a sweeping horizon line. Spaced apart from each other, and installed low on the wall, the paintings achieve a weighted physical presence, and depict a group of seascapes. In the center of the gallery, a configuration of freestanding walls display vertically oriented multi-paneled paintings scaled in relation to the human form. One tableau features numerous figures activating the pictorial plane in their engagements with geometric shapes. Another larger work portrays a sequence of dancers in different positions. Each composition shifts between alternating positive and negative figure-ground relationships, creating the illusion of movement.
Silke Otto-Knapp (b. 1970 Osnabrück, Germany) lives and works in Los Angeles. She earned a M.A. from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, and a degree in Cultural Studies from the University of Hildesheim, Germany.
Selected solo exhibitions include Bühnenbilder, Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2018); Land Lies in Water, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2015); Monday or Tuesday, Camden Arts Centre, London (2014); Cold Climate, Museo Marino Marini, Florence (2014); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2014); Fogo Island Arts, Canada (2014); Geography and Plays, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2013); A light in the moon / MATRIX 239, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley (2011); Many many women, Kunstverein München, Munich (2010); Present time exercise, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2009); and 50ft Queenie, Tate Britain, London (2005). Otto-Knapp’s work was recently included in the Liverpool Biennial 2018: Beautiful world, where are you?, for which she created the artist’s book A series of images following one from the other Eine aufeinander folgende Reihe von Bildern (Compagnia and Motto Books, 2018).
Her work is held in the permanent collections of museums worldwide including Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Belvedere Museum, Vienna; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Serralves Foundation, Porto, Portugal; and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands; among others.
Otto-Knapp is a Professor in the Department of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles.
