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 Six monitors, with the same scene appearing on each: a man, of whom only the head and shoulders are shown, is blowing up colorful balloons. The man is an artist, and red, yellow, blue, green, black and white are the colors of the balloons which, accompanied by the sound of regular breathing, slowly grow over the surface of the screen until they entirely conceal the face of the man blowing and fill out the entire picture. And then comes the end with a loud bang: the balloon breaks, the somewhat surprised looking artist remains, and after a few astonished seconds, he stoically takes up his task anew and begins blowing up the next balloon. This ritual runs on endlessly, with a graduated staggering in time from monitor to monitor such that each monitor becomes characterized respectively by a different color within the changing rhythm. A kind of asynchronous study in color using the means of video technology arises in the combinations. Knöfel calls his performance Homage to painting, and with this places himself in the tradition of a painterly approach to video, which has accompanied the history of the medium from Nam June Paik’s early experiments with synthesizer to the sarcastic paraphrases of the paintings of the abstract expressionists found in the videos of Paul McCarthy. Knöfel, however, does without the pathos of video works of the early years – as the virtuoso game with colors and forms set out to legitimize a decisive artistic claim and, in Paik’s words, prove TV to be a creative medium – as well as the parodic element, with which McCarthy pokes fun at the heroism of modern painting. Far away from artistic warfare, Knöfel’s mise en scène is flatly that which the title professes: a dedication to painting, laconically expressed and realized with “simple means”. To a certain extent, a finger exercise, spiced with a quantum of irony…
The artist as painter in the figure of the balloon blower – in this combination, a connection is drawn to the earlier paintings and drawings of the artist. At the same time, the performance refers to Knöfel’s involvement with video, which has assumed a central position in his artistic work over the past several years and which is here enriched by a new facet. The large-scale video installation Thoughts 1996, made in New York, documents personal statements made by New Yorkers of differing age, sex and skin color on a total of 48 monitors. Whereas this installation explores the communicative potential of the medium in relation to individual recollection and collective memory, Homage to painting has rather to do with a non-verbal reflection of self from the artist’s point of view.
“I don’t want to produce works which are followed by a fat period that indicates: this is the end. I would prefer to initiate a movement, a dynamics which have no end”, is how Knöfel describes his way of working. A next step in Knöfelesque Dynamics and, at the same time, a further facet of video will soon be realized in Tokyo, where the artist will be presenting Gene ratio time factor, a video composition for 24 instruments, in the Fall.
York der Knöfel
- Born 1962 in Potsdam
- Lives and works in Berlin and New York
Scholarships and Prices:
- 1993 Berlinstipendium
Stipendium Schloß Plüschow
- 1997 Stipendium der Stiftung Kulturfonds Berlin
- 1998 Arbeitsstipendium des ICC, Tokyo
Solo exhibitions (Selection):
- 1998 Resident Alien, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (mit Thomas Eller)*
what happened if..., Goethe House, New York (USA)
Gene ration time factor, ICC, Tokyo (Japan)*
- 1997 My Christmas 1996, Raum 98, Galerie Wohnmaschine, Berlin
Thoughts 1996, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin*
Thoughts 1996, Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg*
- 1996 Brüste der Großstadt, Wittrock-Kunsthandel, Düsseldorf
KÖRPER & BETRUG, Galerie Wohnmaschine, Berlin*
- 1995 Bild-Malerei, Galerie Wohnmaschine, Berlin*
- 1994 Breakfast, Art Hotel Amsterdam, bei Galerie Wohnmaschine, Berlin
Arbeiten auf Papier, Wittrock-Kunsthandel, Düsseldorf
Arbeiten auf Papier, DAAD Galerie, Berlin*
- 1993 Malerei Installation, Galerie Wohnmaschine, Berlin
- 1992 Das wissen die Götter oder kreisende Bewegung über dem
Atlantischen Ozean, Galerie Wohnmaschine, Berlin*
- 1991 Einer frisst den anderen, Galerie am Scheunenviertel, Berlin
- 1990 Aufruhr zur Liebe, Galerie Gleditsch 45, Berlin
- 1988 Schlachthaus Berlin, Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Dresden
- 1986 Nachtag, Galerie Treptow, Berlin
- 1985 Portraits, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
Group exhibitions (Selection):
- 1997 Augenzeugen. Die Sammlung Hanck, Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf*
- 1996 Neben den Linden ist die Mitte oder der Blick ins 21., Kunstverein Düsseldorf
Bild-Malerei, Schloß Plüschow*
fünfmaldrei, Berlinische Galerie, Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin*
- 1995 Zimmer mit Aussicht I, Brandenburgischer Kunstverein, Potsdam
- 1994 Dorothea-von-Stetten-Preis, Kunst-Museum Bonn*
Galerie Wohnmaschine Im Russischen Ethnografischen Museum,
St. Petersburg (RUS)*
Bilder der 90er Jahre, Wittrock-Kunsthandel, Düsseldorf
Works on paper by east german artist, Goethe-Institut, San Francisco Augenlied, Schloß Plüschow*
- 1992 Via Italia II eine Raumdokumentation, Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg*
- 1991 Stile libero, Palazzo Ruini, Reggio Emilia, (I)*
- 1990 LÕautre allemange hors les murs, Parc de la Villette, Paris (F)*
Das Schöne ist der Glanz des Wahren, Museum Moritzburg,Halle*
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