Daniel KnorrFlagship Store

Museum Exhibition

IKOB – Museum of Contemporary Art

Eupen

Belgium

2 Mar – 21 Apr 2021

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FLAGSHIP STORE

At the documenta 2017 in Kassel, Germany, art enthusiasts from all over the world witnessed a bewildering spectacle. White smoke was constantly rising from a tower of the Fridericianum Museum. What seemed like a fire was actually an installation by the artist Daniel Knorr. Previously, in the Athens section of the documenta, he had acted as a kind of archaeologist of everyday life, using a monumental scrap metal press to transform found and worthless objects he had picked up on the streets of Athens into catalogues, which visitors could purchase as unique items. Knorr is regarded as a master of shifting meanings as he invites viewers to participate in his art.

IKOB - Museum of Contemporary Art now presents Knorr's first solo exhibition in Belgium, an overview of his sculptural work of the last three years. The title of the exhibition, Flagship Store, refers not only to the temples of consumption of global brands such as Apple, Louis Vuitton or M&M’S, but also to the artist’s own brand that he has crafted over the course of his career. The idea of not only producing his art but also selling and marketing it in his own ‘shop’ stems from the beginning of his career as an internationally sought-after artist. In light of the contemporary art market’s intricate divisions of labour, this idea holds critical potential that comes to the fore in distinct ways through Knorr’s recent works. Playful reflections on art history, undogmatic questioning of the art system, and mixtures of high and low cultural signifiers run as a thread through the exhibition.

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On the ground floor of IKOB, visitors are greeted by the first work from the Coyote Sculptures series: a ghostly appearance, like a stooped human figure covered in a large cape. The work refers to the legendary performance I like America and America likes Me (1974), for which Joseph Beuys locked himself up with a coyote at René Block Gallery in New York. An iconic photograph documenting this action shows Beuys wrapped in a felt coat in dialogue with the coyote. Knorr detaches the felt from its art historical crutches, places a new polyurethane layer over it and questions the unequal dialogue between animal and human from then to now. The motif of a retro screen saver by Apple serves as a protective cover, just as Malevich's Black Square (1915) does for the Coyote Sculpture on the first floor.

The series Berlin Wall Nuggets explores Knorr's interest in the language of the German capital’s built environment, and in particular the imprint left on the city by the Cold War. In this case, he takes imprinting literally, as he finds small depressions in the city's floors and walls, moulds their shapes and casts them in the studio. The resulting small-format objects made of synthetic resin are reminiscent of devotional objects or relics, or of the pieces of the Berlin Wall that have been sold to tourists in large quantities since its fall.

The concept of the large installation Calligraphic Wig (2019) on the first floor of the museum is the discovery of a new language that makes use of today's most widely used material: plastic. The artist visited a recycling plant in Hong Kong where plastic is shredded and melted into strings for reuse. In this recycling process, the machine is often interrupted. Due to breakdowns and maintenance work, uncontrolled entities emerge in the form of fragments of an unknown alphabet, undiscovered underwater creatures or never-before-seen parts of an alien body. To bring these objects back into circulation, the artist painted them with the colours of various car manufacturers.

With his Canvas Sculptures, an important strand of Knorr's practice recurs: the pendulum swing between sculpture and painting as well as art history and the present. These wall objects quote paintings of classical modernism and appear as if the artist were detaching these famous paintings from the canvas. Knorr creates folds that turn the painting into a three-dimensional object, using superimpositions of iconic art historical images to question their status in our world of knowledge and consumption.

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(IKOB)

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Daniel Knorr

IKOB – Museum of Contemporary Art

Photo

Berndt Borchardt
Courtesy: IKOB – Museum of Contemporary Art

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