SALZBURG.- The exhibition love child brings together a group of new paintings of varying sizes that are characterised by a striking colourfulness and unique, irregular shapes. Continuing the artist’s exploration of the fundamentals of painting and sculpture, the works veer between the two artistic categories, combining aspects of both. Defined by their abstract forms and unconventional hues they reflect on the legacies of Suprematism, Minimal Art and Colour Field painting.
Furthering Knoebel’s preoccupation with form, the Love Child works are mounted flat on the wall with a single nail that protrudes through a small, round opening in the copper panel’s surface. ‘Simple!’ explains the artist: ‘I wanted to make it as simple as possible.’
These new works continue to reflect what Martin Schulz wrote about Imi Knoebel’s works at the end of the 1990s: ‘The viewer, who is not given any instructions, has to rely on his own sensual abilities. The viewer is confronted solely with the effects of pure form and colour, which can only be described subjectively. Knoebel’s monumental pictorial objects are virtually surrounded by an archaic mysteriousness. [...] It is a poetry of vacuousness which, in line with Malevich, appeals to pure sensations.’
The Figura- and Standing Paintings are made from aluminium panels, a material the artist has increasingly used since the 1990s. The varied pictorial polygons are mounted at a slight distance from the wall and often askew, reinforcing the sense of weightlessness. This expansion into the room further highlights their sculptural quality, which Knoebel counterbalances with animated surfaces that grant the works painterly characteristics, underscoring their pictorial aspects.
The artist's application of acrylic paint remains visible and varies from flat brushstrokes that he drags lightly across the metal grounds to overt scribblings, from opaque to transparent, from matte to brilliant, revealing a richness of colour while highlighting Knoebel's creative process.
The radiant colours appear almost detached from the picture plane, developing a life of their own. Their purpose lies not in the representation of a preconceived idea, but rather in their pure presence and the immediate effect on the viewer.
While the majority of the works in the exhibition are hung on the wall, the Standing Paintings rest on the floor and thus inherently challenge the relationship between painting, space and the viewer - a fundamental question that runs like a golden thread through Knoebel's practice.
Characterised by its smooth, speckled earth-brown surface, Hartfaserbild (1968/2017) is composed of a rectangular, untreated piece of hardboard - a material Knoebel has used for his works since his earliest creative years as a student at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. This includes his seminal installation Raum 19 (Room 19, 1968), which takes its title from the place of its execution, the classroom that Joseph Beuys had made available to Knoebel and his fellow student Imi Giese.
The panel is mounted to an underlying wooden cuboid and its dimensions were chosen 'intuitively', according to the artist. On the left side of the work, a pale vertical line runs across the wooden surface - a remnant of the material's industrial production.
‘It was around 1968 when I made the Room 19. A long time has passed since then – from 1968 to 2022. These works are basically a conclusion. From the rectangular piece of hardboard to a free form. It has been a journey – to recognise this and to embrace the newness of these Love Childs.’
— Imi Knoebel
