SILKE OTTO-KNAPP AT MODERN ART OXFORD

views of the exhibition


Gavin Brown and Silke Otto-Knapp


on the way to the cocktail


Cerith Wyn Evans and Cornelia Grassi next to the Bodleian



prosecco at sunset next to the Bodleian Library


on the train back: David Waddington, Pablo Lafuente, Hillary Lloyd


SILKE OTTO-KNAPP
PRESENT TIME EXERCISE
4 JULY TO 13 SEPTEMBER

This is the first major exhibition in the UK of the London-based artist Silke Otto-Knapp. Devised as a single installation for Modern Art Oxford’s Upper Gallery, the exhibition presents twelve paintings produced by Otto-Knapp between 2005 and 2009.

Silke Otto-Knapp works with watercolour and gouache on canvas, repeatedly building up and dissolving the surface to create paintings of subtle effect. Drawing on a photographic archive of visual sources that refer to the spatial staging of the formal garden and the choreography of modern dance, Otto-Knapp’s tautly constructed yet mutable compositions are rendered in layers of diluted pigment and metallic silver monotones. Recent paintings reveal the artist’s evolving investigations into the construction of pictorial space with a renewed approach to the figure and colour through which more complex narratives emerge.