SETAREH X is pleased to announce the solo exhibition End or Fin by Düsseldorf-based artist Björn Knapp. For the formation of his paintings Knapp utilises photography as an aid. In the subsequent painterly process, he develops colour-intensive compositions between form and non-form.
Based on photographs that are superimposed onto each other combined into complex collages, Björn Knapp realises a new pictorial language which, when transferred to the canvas with systematic precision and vivid colours, evokes a sensually perceivable corporeality.
The ambiguity of the exhibition title finds a correspondence in the open readability of these paintings, which seem to depict something and at the same time do not depict; in which something seems recognizable, yet nothing is clearly defined in terms of motif or representation. The abstract colour fields arouse corporal associations through their organic shapes and flesh-toned colouring, while painterly spatialisations create references to landscape.
Knapp's subtle play with the figure-ground relationship, with colour effects, contrasts, and perceptual processes creates both familiar and fundamentally new corporal images, implying a pluralistic view of identity and a dissolution of traditional ways of looking at the human body. Ultimately, Knapp's images appear as a painterly equivalent to the fragmentation of bodies in an increasingly digitalized world.
Björn Knapp (b. 1988 in Bensheim, DE) studied at the Kunstakademie Karlsruhe from 2012 to 2015 and at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 2015 to 2020, where he graduated as a 'Meisterschüler' of Thomas Scheibitz. In 2020 he participated in the group show Genius Loci 8 at SETAREH Düsseldorf and was shown at salondergegenwart. In 2021 he was part of the graduates exhibition Coming to voice at K21. Currently he is exhibited on the occasion of the Stipendium Vordemberge-Gildewart 2021 at KIT, Düsseldorf. His works have been purchased by the Kunstsammlung NRW and the Kunstpalast Düsseldorf.
Press release courtesy SETAREH X.
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