Karin Kneffel: Untitled, 2019. Oil on canvas, 180 x 240 cm. Photo: Achim Kukulies, courtesy the artist & Galerie Friese, Berlin.
»Re/Construction« assembles paintings from various pivotal work series created between 2015 and 2020.
The common theme is their examination of icons from recent art and cultural history: the architecture of Mies van der Rohe, references to Lehmbruck’s sculptures, paintings by Schlemmer and Baumeister, the reworking of Richter’s famous candle paintings. Kneffel’s image spaces function as sites for dealing with the question of the currency of the material negotiated in art: what significance do these pictures have then and now, how do contexts change their perception?
Simultaneously precise and effortless, Kneffel’s images explore the status of art, taking a poster design by Willi Baumeister with the title "Wie wohnen?" (How to live?) as a starting point. When Kneffel places Duane Hanson’s sculpture "Window Washer" in front of the glass cube of the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg as a resurrected memorial, the question is not only “How to paint?” but also, inevitably, “How to live?”
