Silke Otto-Knapp
(1970–2022)
Silke Otto-Knapp is a painter who works in the medium of watercolour on canvas. Otto-Knapp produces landscape paintings as well as paintings based on historical documentation of stage design and performance. Unlike traditional watercolourists, Otto-Knapp applies layers of watercolour that are washed down and then applied anew. These countless coats produce the coexistence of conflicting concepts of space – surface and depth, contour and corporeality, distance and closeness, reality and figurativeness – which give rise to a tension between the motif and the picture surface.
(courtesy of Taka Ishii)
Silke Otto-Knapp - Forest, 2019
Silke Otto-Knapp - Installation view of In the Waiting Room, at Renaissance Society, Chicago
Silke Otto-Knapp - Installation view of In the Waiting Room, at Renaissance Society, Chicago
Silke Otto-Knapp - Installation view of In the Waiting Room, at Renaissance Society, Chicago
Silke Otto-Knapp - Installation view of Michael Clark- Cosmic Dancer, at Barbican Art Gallery, London
Silke Otto-Knapp - Installation view of Bühnenbilder Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis in 2018
Silke Otto-Knapp - Curtain (silver), 2011
Solo exhibitions include The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; Museo Marino Marini, Florence; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Camden Art Center, London; and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. Group exhibitions include Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec, Canada; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Germany; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Tate Britain, London; Chelsea Art Museum, New York; Montehermoso Cultural Center, Spain; The 9th Istanbul Biennial; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Silke Otto-Knapp is represented by the following galleries;
click through to discover more of her work.
