DANIEL KNORR
"Blowout"
PILEVNELI | YALIKAVAK
Daniel Knorr, who has defined making art as "liberation" since a young age, emphasizes the power of art to represent situations he is interested in, such as structures, environment, conditions of the society we belong to and the memory of the city. Known for his interesting projects in which he uses alternative materials such as cocaine, pit molds and smoke to trigger political and social debates, his works dealing with the concepts of emptiness, representation and fantasy are remarkable. Knorr's works, which criticize today's realities with unlimited materials and content, sometimes directly, sometimes with metaphors and symbols, stand out with their similarities to sculpture, the variety of colours obtained with materials of varying origin, and the "materialization" of ideas and concepts through these methods. The artist even pushed the boundaries of this materialization issue and left the space completely empty at the Venice Biennale in 2005, where he represented his country Romania, and paved the way for an important debate in the art world. Knorr's "Blowout" series on display at Pilevneli Yalıkavak may at first glance seem to be independent from these issues, more object and colour-oriented, yet in fact it is a continuation of the artist's thought that ranges from the concepts of memory and emptiness to the criticism of consumer society.
Can an exhibition be made out of emptiness?
In today's art world, the intense interest in the concept of emptiness has gradually expanded with the ideas and discussions that artists put forward through spaces, objects, texts and performances. Although the definition of art and creativity is traditionally associated with the production of artworks, it is possible to see the exhibition of nothingness or emptiness as a way for the artist to establish a connection with the audience. Although at first it creates anxiety in the viewer, emptiness can gradually turn into new ideas, associations and different cause-and-effect relationships. In this context, over time, artists have sometimes exhibited blank canvases in the gallery space, sometimes integrated the concept of Horror Vacui (fear of emptiness) into their works, and sometimes preferred to leave the exhibition space itself empty as a political stance or action, as Knorr did. He adapted this method and left the Romanian Pavilion empty at the Venice Biennale, where he was invited, showing traces of past exhibitions and leaving the back door of the space open to provide access to the public life of the city. At the entrance to the pavilion was a printed publication: 1,000 pages of critical texts on the immense enlargement of the European Union. This "void" was given another form, "materialized" in the artist's words, by the publication and its dissemination, the discussions, notes and press reports by visitors, media and art professionals.
Canvas Sculptures: Where did it come from, where is it going?
Apart from the biennial process focusing on the concept of emptiness, Knorr has also realized important projects related to the city and the memory of its spaces and streets. For example, "Depression Elevations", a series of resin sculptures cast from impressions of city streets, are the outputs of a process in which the artist explored the surface of Los Angeles. In this series, depressions in sidewalks or road surfaces are transformed into objects. In a performance-like act reminiscent of Jackson Pollock's working method, the artist pours copious amounts of polyurethane material into the cracks or potholes he sees on the road, fills them with an artificial material developed for the creative industries, and paints them in different colours. The result: A transparent and intricately patterned wall sculpture with a smooth surface that looks almost still wet. Behind the gaudy, flamboyant, sugary-sweet surfaces of these forms rippling in real, irregular crevices in the floor, they perhaps also conceal the toxic and dangerous memory of the city. Knorr states that an image is created here that carries the collective history; the depressions below ground level, the cracking and disintegration of the hard surface and the lack of repair work can be read as signs of crisis, economic decline or neglect in our society. On the other hand, by filling in the gaps on the surfaces, the artist revives an alternative Japanese Kintsugi philosophy (repairing a broken object in a more beautiful way, reformation of the damage), creating a kind of three-dimensional painting that continues to revive associations with the place where it was discovered thanks to the re-pouring of the material on the road. It is from this project that Knorr's "Canvas Sculptures" continue to evolve.
Gold Pillows: How much does this piece weigh?
In addition to Knorr's colourful three-dimensional wall sculptures, there is another series that can be considered a continuation of the "Canvas Sculptures" series: Pillows. These works, which resemble a crumpled, wrinkled gold-coloured stiff fabric or paper, are based on Albrecht Dürer's "Pillow Studies" drawings and refer to Andy Warhol's helium silver balloons and minimalist metal works. These wall sculptures are made from unmolded pillows that are covered with resin and gold leaf. The series begins with the lowest gold karat out of six carats, and the purity of the gold used in each of the works increases, reaching the highest value of 24 karats. Reflecting the irregular sleeping patterns of Dürer's drawings from the 1490s that inspired this series, the wrinkled and curved pillows can be seen as a kind of fantastic memory object that not only preserves partial traces of the sleeper, but also fills their dreamscapes. Another inspiration for the series, Warhol's "Silver Clouds", first exhibited in 1966, are modern objects filled with air and helium and arranged to float freely in space. Knorr's gold-plated works thus extend from the dreamy, naïve drawings of the Renaissance to the Pop Art culture that responded to the rapidly developing luxury consumer society of the post-World War II era, and with their aesthetic appeal and subtle criticism, they take their place in the contemporary reality of our day.
The Construction of a New Surface: Canvas Sculptures and Blowout Series
Defining the canvas as one of the secondary aspects of an artwork, the artist uses it as a painting surface by copying the structure of the canvas in the works exhibited in the "Blowout" series. Motifs from Modernism take shape and deform like a deflating air mattress. Thus, the images, liberated from their canvasses and transformed into shape and colour in space, translate all their subjects into our times. In these works, developed from the "Depression Elevations" series, the artist binds the painting with synthetic resin at the final stage, completely removing it from the canvas. Inspired by modernist painting, the artist combines various aspects and genres from art history. In the 1960s, minimalism in art represented the serial division and industrialization of natural resources. The Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism) movement, which emerged in Europe, was a new perspective on the idea of reality and was generally an attempt to create a perception of the environment. Today, however, we live in an age of object-oriented mass production where art is the model for a kind of decoration object, such as wallpapers, tablecloths, shower curtains etc. From this point of view, the canvas sculptures in the "Blowout" series, when read together with the artist's previous periods and productions, constitute a new level for the artistic practice of painting by becoming a reaction to the industrial aspect of the objectification of culture.
