For « SEKTION », his solo show at Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Fabian Knecht chose to gather four gestures. Even though he points out that each of them could potentially be the object of a monographic presentation, the works shown here all jeopardize art’s superstructure. It is not so much the activity of producing an image, a form or a sign that is the subject here, but rather the conditions of « appearing » ; that is to say, the intricate network of historical, economical and social relations that together define this alternative reality called art. Starting with the white-cube, hijacking all that is sensitive, a mere presentation convention which consists in extracting the presented artefacts from their production environment. With ISOLATION (Eismeer), the artist offers to reverse the process : not bringing the content back into the artistic container, but on the contrary by directly installing the container in open country and raising its content to the level of a work of art. The white-cube becomes a sculpture, and the surrounding nature its pedestal. As an introduction, the artist dedicates the first two rooms in his exhibition to the intervention’s fourth occurence, set on the frozen Sea of Japan, in Vladivostok, Russia, that he documents using large format photographs as well as a display presenting the various steps in the elaboration of the work.
Fabian Knecht: SEKTION
Past exhibition
