Lucas Knipscher
06 Sep - 05 Oct 2013
© Lucas Knipscher
Untitled, 2013
Fabric and photographic emulsion on dibond
213.4 x 109.2 cm 84 x 43 ins
Untitled, 2013
Fabric and photographic emulsion on dibond
213.4 x 109.2 cm 84 x 43 ins
LUCAS KNIPSCHER
6 September – 5 October 2013
6A Minerva Street is delighted to present a show by New York artist Lucas Knipscher.
Knipscher will show a new series of flat stretched fabric works on aluminium Dibond panels and a sculptural piece. Handling a variety of mediums and aware of the effects of humour, he addresses the dialectic between appropriation on the one hand, – and all the academic trappings that this might incur, and something more akin to homage on the other. Summoning particular influence from Isa Genzken, Cosima Von Bonin, Robert Rauschenberg and Rosemarie Trockel, he uses these figures as vectors through which to scrutinize the parameters of his own agency as artist working in New York today.
One mode of this thinking comes in the form of his stretched fabric panels. The fabrics might have African, Ikat-dyed material or Tropicália type patterning – or whatever exotic style happens to be in that season. All the patterns are printed versions of the original weaves. Bought from a famous textiles shop in New York’s garment district, the swatches are sewn together in pairs before being haphazardly thrown over the Dibond and quickly tacked down at the back. Echoing the casualness of this gesture, rather sardonically perhaps, the Dibond bends slightly at the top lip. Drape-like and put upon, it seems to acknowledge its own role as behind the scenes support. Photographic emulsion is slathered over sections of the panels and exposed multiple times using traditional black and white wet room processes. Photograms of the material itself are superimposed with elite lifestyle magazine shots or cartoons, bringing the materiality of the photographic image as object in circulation within a larger apparatus quite literally into sharper relief.
Loosely based on Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘Jammer’ series (1975-76) the sculpture will comprise a fishing rod with a lure dangling from the end of its line. Usually a plastic fish or a maggot, this time the trick comes in the form of a made object that, having all the correct properties to secure its zeitgeist credos, is ultra recognisably an ‘art’ one.
Whether it is 60s New York, London, Berlin or Gaugin’s Tahiti, particular versions of places prevail as images despite massive transformations since or even their degree of fidelity to a historical reality. As destinations they endure as lures, promises of the exotic that draw artists to them. They become tropical island perhaps, or at least somewhere to embark on an expected type of lifestyle. Such images are constantly reaffirmed via the circulation of photographs, objects or even fabrics. Rauschenberg experienced New York first hand for example while Genzken and Von Bonin et al processed its popular culture and sent it back via a critical European filter. Knipscher posits his own position as one at the receiving end of this constant layering of interpretation and asks what it is to reshape these always amassing versions so that they might make sense again now.
6 September – 5 October 2013
6A Minerva Street is delighted to present a show by New York artist Lucas Knipscher.
Knipscher will show a new series of flat stretched fabric works on aluminium Dibond panels and a sculptural piece. Handling a variety of mediums and aware of the effects of humour, he addresses the dialectic between appropriation on the one hand, – and all the academic trappings that this might incur, and something more akin to homage on the other. Summoning particular influence from Isa Genzken, Cosima Von Bonin, Robert Rauschenberg and Rosemarie Trockel, he uses these figures as vectors through which to scrutinize the parameters of his own agency as artist working in New York today.
One mode of this thinking comes in the form of his stretched fabric panels. The fabrics might have African, Ikat-dyed material or Tropicália type patterning – or whatever exotic style happens to be in that season. All the patterns are printed versions of the original weaves. Bought from a famous textiles shop in New York’s garment district, the swatches are sewn together in pairs before being haphazardly thrown over the Dibond and quickly tacked down at the back. Echoing the casualness of this gesture, rather sardonically perhaps, the Dibond bends slightly at the top lip. Drape-like and put upon, it seems to acknowledge its own role as behind the scenes support. Photographic emulsion is slathered over sections of the panels and exposed multiple times using traditional black and white wet room processes. Photograms of the material itself are superimposed with elite lifestyle magazine shots or cartoons, bringing the materiality of the photographic image as object in circulation within a larger apparatus quite literally into sharper relief.
Loosely based on Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘Jammer’ series (1975-76) the sculpture will comprise a fishing rod with a lure dangling from the end of its line. Usually a plastic fish or a maggot, this time the trick comes in the form of a made object that, having all the correct properties to secure its zeitgeist credos, is ultra recognisably an ‘art’ one.
Whether it is 60s New York, London, Berlin or Gaugin’s Tahiti, particular versions of places prevail as images despite massive transformations since or even their degree of fidelity to a historical reality. As destinations they endure as lures, promises of the exotic that draw artists to them. They become tropical island perhaps, or at least somewhere to embark on an expected type of lifestyle. Such images are constantly reaffirmed via the circulation of photographs, objects or even fabrics. Rauschenberg experienced New York first hand for example while Genzken and Von Bonin et al processed its popular culture and sent it back via a critical European filter. Knipscher posits his own position as one at the receiving end of this constant layering of interpretation and asks what it is to reshape these always amassing versions so that they might make sense again now.