Knopp Ferro — Lines, sculptures et dessins — Catherine Putman Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: November 23, 2013 → January 25, 2014

The sculptor Knopp Ferro’s works embody lightness, movement and transparency as reflected in his mobiles composed of thin iron rods. His sensibility is also revealed in his drawings, which he has regularly composed since the 1990s and considers as movement per se. Ink drawings inform his sculpture without being preparatory works; knife drawings reveal the paper’s plasticity and create reliefs, thus leading back to sculpture. Drawing and sculpture are the two modes of expression the Galerie Catherine Putman wishes to show in this exhibition.

The gallery offers a dialogue between the drawings shown within the space created by the iron mobiles, the ink drawings that dance on the paper, and the subtlety of the papers lacerated with knives.

Knopp Ferro started working in Germany in the 1970s, inspired by the Fluxus movement. At the time, he studied metal sculpture and performance art at the Academy of Art and Design in Cologne and set up an artist group called Jet Ferro. This group built huge installations in sheet metal, mixing sculpture, punk music, and performance. When the group split up in 1979, Knopp Ferro founded “Bumper to Bumper” in Switzerland, an anarchist and performative theater. The artist’s body became his sole instrument. Gradually, materials — mostly iron — crept into his work again, leading to vibrating sculptures, perpetually in motion.

In Knopp Ferro’s contemporary works, the sculptures, often named Linienschiffe (liners), still evoke performance through movement. The quiet movement of his constructions spread diagonally or cascade: three-dimensional drawings in space.
The ink drawings, and even more so the Messerzeichnungen (knife drawings), suggest the artist’s gesture, his past as a performance artist and actor.

Though the geometry of his compositions clearly brings to mind post-minimalism, the artist’s work in sculpture is primary imbued with lightness and poetry, a floating world. It is the same lightness and transparency that one clearly finds in his works on paper.