Imi Knoebel — Position — Catherine Putman Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 6 → October 31, 2014

Imi Knoebel, major figure of the German abstract painting, exhibit for the first time at the Gallery Catherine Putman. At the occasion of the publication of the portfolio Schwules Bild, the exhibition assemble around thirty unique and multiple works.

Imi Knoebel has always expressed himself through the means of colour and volume as it is well illustrated in the portfolio Schwules Bild, co-edited this year by the Gallery and presented for the first time in this exhibition. This sequence of eight prints, whereby monochrome forms of subtle colours are printed in relief, is inspired by the series of the same name, composed of eight paintings of a very large format (acrylic on wood, about 200 × 150 cm each) dating from 1976.

This edition distinguishes itself from the pieces of the series Position, compositions of acrylic paint on plastified paper, realised between 2007 and 2012. Realised in five copies by Imi Knoebel himself, these eight paintings / collages, all different, offer dynamic relationships of forms and colours. Within the space constructed by the assembly of eight painted rectangles, small elements of variable sizes float, in balance, declined in infinite nuances of colours, from the most pastel to the flashiest.

Imi Knoebel, Position I, 2012 Acrylic on paper plastified — 40 × 56 cm Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Catherine Putman, Paris

This search of balance between forms and colours — fundamental in the work of Imi Knoebel — can be found in a binary relationship, in works from the series entitled An meine Grüne Seite. The exhibition presents five of these acrylic on aluminium paintings, of a small format, realised between 2007 and 2014. The support takes us further towards the sculpture. Each painted plate, monochrome, is placed, slightly inclined, on a small aluminium shelf. The plate is leaned against a second painting, this time on paper, of the same format, the tiny space revealed through inclination of the plate liberating a thin coloured stripe.

Finally, the exhibition display a set of ink on paper works from the seventies, close to the drawing study, the gesture there being different from the one in the recent works, nevertheless we find the search of forms and compositions proper to the artist’s work..

The work of Imi Knoebel defines itself by colour and construction. If he is a painter, his paintings and his works on paper always integrate volumes, regular (or not) forms, square, rectangle, cross, that he assembles and superimposes… He places objects in space with great freedom to transform them in a subversive gesture into something new.

Imi Knoebel was born in 1940, in Dessau, lives and works in Düsseldorf.A singular German artist, he is marked by his artistic conceptions of Malévitch and Mondrian. Between 1964 and 1971, he studied at Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf, at the workshop of Joseph Beuys with Jörg Immendorff and Blinky Palermo. His works can be found in numerous collections such as those of MoMA and of Dia Art Foundation (New-York), Albertina (Vienne), le FRAC (Paris)… In parallel with his recent personal exhibitions, at the Musée d’art moderne grand-duc Jean in Luxembourg in 2010, at the Neue National galerie and at the Guggenheim Foundation in Berlin in 2009, Imi Knoebel realised, between 2009 and 2011, six stained-glass windows, on the surface of 128 m2, which surround those of Chagall’s in the apse of the cathedral Notre-Dame of Reims. He participated in numerous collective exhibitions such as the documenta (5, 6, 7 and 8) in Cassel.