Erwin Kneihsl
Erwin Kneihsl trained as a photographer at the Höhere Graphische Lehrund Versuchsanstalt (Academy and Research Institute for Graphic Design) before moving to Berlin at the beginning of the 1970s where, he turned to film, painting, and performance. By the late 1990s, however, the main focus of his work had shifted back to photography. Kneihsl’s style and technique—he consistently works in analogue black and white—references the nineteenth-century beginnings of photography. Like the Pictorialists, he does away with the merely illustrative character of the medium in favor of heightened artistic expression in the photographic image. Interventions in the developing process abstract the normal appearance of his subjects—images are manipulated, grey values eliminated, black and white contrast taken to extremes, and soft focus is consciously deployed as a formal principle. As a result of these alienating effects, his high-contrast, coarse-grained silver-gelatin prints—most of them stapled directly onto cardboard and all of them unique pieces—dissociate themselves from the concreteness of the object depicted and seem to take on lives of their own.
Solo presentations of Kneihsl’s work have been shown at various galleries and art institutions, including Galerie Andreas Höhne, Munich, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin, allerArt, Bludenz, Dominikanerkloster, Vienna, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, …
Erwin Kneihsl trained as a photographer at the Höhere Graphische Lehrund Versuchsanstalt (Academy and Research Institute for Graphic Design) before moving to Berlin at the beginning of the 1970s where, he turned to film, painting, and performance. By the late 1990s, however, the main focus of his work had shifted back to photography. Kneihsl’s style and technique—he consistently works in analogue black and white—references the nineteenth-century beginnings of photography. Like the Pictorialists, he does away with the merely illustrative character of the medium in favor of heightened artistic expression in the photographic image. Interventions in the developing process abstract the normal appearance of his subjects—images are manipulated, grey values eliminated, black and white contrast taken to extremes, and soft focus is consciously deployed as a formal principle. As a result of these alienating effects, his high-contrast, coarse-grained silver-gelatin prints—most of them stapled directly onto cardboard and all of them unique pieces—dissociate themselves from the concreteness of the object depicted and seem to take on lives of their own.
Solo presentations of Kneihsl’s work have been shown at various galleries and art institutions, including Galerie Andreas Höhne, Munich, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin, allerArt, Bludenz, Dominikanerkloster, Vienna, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Fleischhauerei Oranienplatz, Berlin. He has created a number of films including Dracula, D (2005), Stalins Tod, D (2004), Im Dickicht der Gefühle, D (1983), and Deutschland Privat, D (1980).
Courtesy of Galerie Guido W. Baudach
