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11/3/2014

Silke Otto-Knapp

Kunsthalle Wien Project Space, Wien

Silke Otto-Knapp – Questions of Travel presents parallel exhibitions by the artist in two decidedly different locations: at the Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz in the center of Vienna and on Fogo Island off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada. For these exhibitions, Otto-Knapp, a German native now based in Los Angeles, selects a group of paintings from the past three years. For some time now, Otto-Knapp has turned increasingly to landscape painting and, much as in her paintings based around dance and performance, her images testify to a study of the conventions of this genre and her reinterpretation of its histories set within a model-like situation. Other new works focus on theatre cloths, curtains and backdrops to depict landscapes in various degrees of abstraction and in this way stage them.

Otto-Knapp has spent time in both locations, teaching for almost two years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and undertaking three extended residencies on Fogo Island. The resulting contrast—between urban and rural, new and old world—is evident in the groupings the artist chose for her respective shows. The partnering of these exhibitions also brings clearly into focus questions about art and its context. When interviewed by Nicolaus Schafhausen on the topic, Otto-Knapp likens an art exhibition to "a staged situation that is both distinctly separate from reality and engaged with it at the same time." As the activating element of an exhibition, the viewer could be said to embody the reality of a work's engagement, a corollary of the presentation's specificity, the "limitation in time and space," Otto-Knapp identifies as being crucial to creating "a relationship and relevance to the world for the work."

In the exhibition Questions of Travel (Wien), Otto-Knapp's paintings are placed alongside drawings by Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Hill (1849–1911), who organised his works as a scenography of expressive self-interrogation based on the motif of the stage.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition is the catalogue Silke Otto-Knapp – Questions of Travel (2014), a co-production of Fogo Island Arts, Kunsthalle Wien and Sternberg Press. The book features essays by Vanessa Joan Müller and Susan Morgan and Silke Otto-Knapp interviewed by Nicolaus Schafhausen.

Opening Wednesday March 12th 2014

Kunsthalle Wien Project Space
Karlsplatz, Treitlstrasse 2, Wien
Open hours: daily 10 - 19 and Thursday 10-21
Admission: general 8€ and reduced price 6€

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