Karl Haendel

°1976, New York (US) – lives and works in Los Angeles (US)

Karl Haendel’s practise revolves around the appropriation of visual signifiers and their recontextualization through drawing. For Haendel, the act of drawing articulates both the human impulse and labour associated with draftsmanship, while offering a physical system to reconsider accepted imagery. Haendel’s drawings, often uncanny renderings, pointedly remove images from their original context— media publications, frozen food labels, medieval knights—and reconfigure them through scale, black and white tonality, and juxtaposition into a new of visual language. It is through this manipulation and repacking of pre-existing imagery that Haendel is able to present keen criticism on contemporary socio-cultural relations, demanding the viewer to draw his or her own.

(courtesy of Mitchell-Innes & Nash)

Karl Haendel – Double Dominant Part I, installation view at Vielmetter (Courtesy of Robert Wedemeye)

Karl Haendel – Double Dominant 14, 2019 (Photo by Candice Lin)

Karl Haendel – installation view at Biennial of the Americas, 2015

Karl Haendel – Killing Pablo #8, 2012

Karl Haendel – Rodeo 9, 2017

Karl Haendel – Unfinished Obama, 2016

Karl Haendel has shown his work in solo exhibitions at Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; Museo de Arte de El Salvador; Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Group exhibitions include Haifa Museum of Art; Kunsthalle Bielefeld; Museum of Contemporary Art Denver; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; and Musée d’Art Moderne et d’ArtContemporain, Nice.

His work has also been included in recent biennials such as the 2014 Whitney Biennial, New York; the 12th Biennale de Lyon. Karl Haendel’s works are in the public collections, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; Lambert Collection, Avignon; Flick Collection, Berlin; Colección Jumex, Mexico City, and the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Karl Haendel is represented by the following galleries;
click through for more info on his work.

Vielmetter, Los Angeles

Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York

Wentrup Gallery, Berlin