- Venue
- Wilkinson Gallery
- Location
- London
A distinctive painter, Thoralf Knobloch trained at Dresden school of art, and has for nearly a decade built a body of work that on first sight could be described as realist painting; well, look again. Using a camera, Knobloch gathers his source material which eventually feeds into motifs for subsequent paintings. His subjects: shopping bags, children’s toys, dustbins, traffic signs and anonymous empty urban spaces are never socialist realist. His works could be described as quiet observations of things in a state of entropy, revealing a sense of something catastrophic having taken place, leaving a trace of human activity. These depictions never pertain to idyllic sentiment but instead appear to be apocalyptic, bearing a subtle uneasiness of atmosphere as can be recognised in the film ‘The Last Man on Earth’ (1964). Set in the aftermath of an unnamed catastrophe which killed off all humans apart from the forenamed ‘Last man’ of the title, the central character of the film is left wandering the desolate city streets, but as the story goes on to unfold we find he is not actually alone. Knobloch’s paintings could almost be backdrops of scenes from the film, the desolate spaces where no one can be seen, the objects within the paintings are missing one crucial thing, a human operative. While the banality of everyday trashy items have become the artist’s starting point in making a painting: Lichtleitbake, 2011, Feldscheune, 2011, Zwei Spiegel, seitwärts, 2011, Prellbock, 2011; Knobloch’s paintings resonate with thought provoking layers of aesthetic complexity; they are rich in looseness, with highly detailed elements and pictorial vibrancy. They are clearly a painterly translation of photographs but as a painted image they sit between abstraction and realism.
In terms of methodology it could be agreed on, that his paintings are not in the category of traditional figurative painting i.e. the artist does not sit within a specific locality and sketch what he sees, as an empirical or epistemological exercise. Knobloch‘s paintings are not actually representing the real world as in a mirror-like effect, but rather receive their aesthetic information from an archive of photographs which reflect a so-called truth to reality, a trace of the real. They contain no accurate approximation of a photo but instead Knobloch uses his photographic image as a platform, a vehicle, through which he can explore the potentiality of painting and its material possibilities, as a formalist. The formalist approach is evident through the painterly brushstrokes that float over hazy backgrounds, blurred contours, slashes of line and thin layers of glazes. These help to formulate an interesting mix of attractive qualities. Knobloch‘s emphasis on abstraction can even be thought of as (dare I say) expressionist.
In opposition to this, Knobloch has cleverly created a space for realist techniques which provide a creative tension. The painted objects that sit over the abstract areas have been made with real attention to detail giving way to realism. Geometric lines (confidently drawn out over the canvas creating interesting over lapping compositions) perspectival complexity and dramatic shifts in focus have become Knobloch’s aesthetic design, the images posses a sharp animated energy demonstrating that he has calculated the laying down of paint and positioning of objects, creating illusionistic depth but negated at certain points establishing an aesthetic oscillation. Knobloch’s painting techniques can be likened to that of Henri Matisse (although Matisse’s brush strokes were of wild colours; Fauvism).Knobloch’s painting techniques can be likened to that of Henri Matisse (although Matisse’s brush strokes were of wild colours; Fauvism). Knobloch utilises the pictorial design; the strong drawn charcoal lines, to reinforce pictorial forms, such as the human body, to avoid complete disintegration.
The term paradox in its widest sense could be applied to Knobloch’ s aesthetic procedure, and to describe his use of aesthetic oppositions. Discussing his paintings through the conceptual understanding of paradox and contradiction will allow a new perspective on his work to be established. Historically these two aesthetics have been in contrast, in opposition, two separate practices with their own philosophical infrastructures. Knobloch’s paintings could be seen as operating in a space of revolt against the Greenberg aesthetic dogma (an aesthetic divorced from realism and illusionism in favour of form and flat surface) and creating a new painting process; the combining of two artistic models; it is worth noting that this paradoxical proposition in Knobloch’s paintings can be traced within the paintings of Matisse if one looks carefully. It is possible to argue that a rupture has happened in the conventional language of representational painting and created a new painting schema, where abstraction and representation can be seen as symbiotic, functioning in aesthetic paradox or contradiction. Knobloch, amongst other contemporary painters such as Eberhard Havekost, Tim Eitel, and Luc Tuymans, is operating in this new schema. Thoralf Knobloch has become the post-modern quintessence of how painting can. To widen this aesthetic proposition further, let us consider the paradox as potential artistic activity and conceptual framework that allows the artistic procedure to be explored. In his book ‘The Communist Postscript’ Boris Groys discusses ideas around ‘dialectical materialism’ a premise that strives for the unity and the conflict of opposites; so to apply and follow this rule in aesthetics is to operate and think paradoxically.
According to Groys, formal logic evades contradiction and paradox which is the human essence. An artist operating in the field of two oppositions, switching one’s mind from one aesthetic potential to another means that one has to think in opposites, to think in the philosophies of material dialectics. Groys has said that ‘material dialectics’ thinks in terms of ‘unity of A and non-A’; the idea is to embrace the opposite and to think in opposites. If we apply this procedure to painting, we could then say that the ‘unity of A, is abstraction and that the unity of non-A, is realism. The potential in working in opposites creates a position where the painter is operating in totality; a new artistic painting schema is now a new potential, but one must remember; the painter (artist) should strive for an even greater paradox. The principle of this paradox as premise can be seen within Knobloch’s paintings as a whole and it’s this aesthetic and conceptual potentiality that makes his painting all the more interesting and inspiring for other new painters.
