TAB Event - Silke Otto-Knapp “Standing anywhere in the space in a relaxed position”

Silke Otto-Knapp “Standing anywhere in the space in a relaxed position”

Taka Ishii Gallery

This event has ended.

Taka Ishii Gallery is holding the debut solo exhibition in Japan of German-born, London-based painter Silke Otto-Knapp. Otto-Knapp's work has been included in numerous international museum exhibitions. In 2004, Otto-Knapp exhibited for the first time in Japan, participating in the Taka Ishii Gallery group exhibition "Sugar Hiccup".
Silke Otto-Knapp initially created images of Los Angeles and Las Vegas cityscapes and gardens. These works were painted exclusively in the unorthodox medium of watercolor on canvas and were based on both found and taken photographic images. Otto-Knapp utilized the lack of her chosen paint-carrier [canvas] to absorb the media of watercolor to create densely layered, semi-transparent images; the formal properties of each painting directly referring to the insubstantial nature of her source material. Otto Knapp’s work has subsequently examined more closely the artificial interior, focusing concurrently on images of carefully constructed English gardens as well as showgirls and performances housed within casinos located on the previously depicted “Las Vegas Strip”.
Otto Knapp’s Taka Ishii Gallery exhibition represents both a further refinement and development in the artist’s practice. Concentrating on source material more closely related to the body and its position within and relation to constructed space, the artist draws upon source material as wide-ranging as images documenting the performance work of American artist Yvonne Rainer to posed photographs of punk-rock musicians. Otto-Knapp re-presents these images on canvas in a simplified form. The addition of solid areas painted in silver gouache to canvases saturated in the artist’s trademark watercolor further complicates the depicted relationship between figure and ground.

[Image: "Two Figures (leaning)", 2006: Watercolour and Gouache on Canvas, 100 x 120cm]
(Courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery and Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne)