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Karin Kneffel

New Works

April 28–June 11, 2016
Beverly Hills

Karin Kneffel, Untitled, 2016 Oil on canvas, 70 ⅞ × 63 inches (180 × 160 cm)© Karin Kneffel

Karin Kneffel, Untitled, 2016

Oil on canvas, 70 ⅞ × 63 inches (180 × 160 cm)
© Karin Kneffel

Karin Kneffel, Untitled, 2016 Oil on canvas, 70 ⅞ × 94 ½ inches (180 × 240 cm)© Karin Kneffel, photo by Achim Kukulies

Karin Kneffel, Untitled, 2016

Oil on canvas, 70 ⅞ × 94 ½ inches (180 × 240 cm)
© Karin Kneffel, photo by Achim Kukulies

Karin Kneffel, Untitled, 2016 Oil on canvas, 70 ⅞ × 94 ½ inches (180 × 240 cm)© Karin Kneffel, photo by Achim Kukulies

Karin Kneffel, Untitled, 2016

Oil on canvas, 70 ⅞ × 94 ½ inches (180 × 240 cm)
© Karin Kneffel, photo by Achim Kukulies

Karin Kneffel, Untitled, 2016 Oil on canvas, 70 ⅞ × 78 ¾ inches (180 × 200 cm)© Karin Kneffel, photo by Achim Kukulies

Karin Kneffel, Untitled, 2016

Oil on canvas, 70 ⅞ × 78 ¾ inches (180 × 200 cm)
© Karin Kneffel, photo by Achim Kukulies

Karin Kneffel, Untitled, 2016 Oil on canvas, 70 ⅞ × 51 3/16 inches (180 × 130 cm)© Karin Kneffel, photo by Achim Kukulies

Karin Kneffel, Untitled, 2016

Oil on canvas, 70 ⅞ × 51 3/16 inches (180 × 130 cm)
© Karin Kneffel, photo by Achim Kukulies

Karin Kneffel, Untitled, 2016 Oil on canvas, 63 × 51 3/16 inches (180 × 130 cm)© Karin Kneffel, photo by Achim Kukulies

Karin Kneffel, Untitled, 2016

Oil on canvas, 63 × 51 3/16 inches (180 × 130 cm)
© Karin Kneffel, photo by Achim Kukulies

About

I paint temporalities that are sometimes factual and sometimes imagined, or sometimes about the slip in our own imaginings of what was or was not there, or how it appeared.
—Karin Kneffel

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present new works by Karin Kneffel. This is her second exhibition with the gallery and her first in Los Angeles.

Kneffel's lush and eloquent pictures are perfectly constructed impossibilities, where different places and incidents are collapsed together in a seductively realist manner. Although many of her sources actually exist, the resulting images are cunningly wrought scenes inspired by the many lives of art, and which highlight painting's unique ability to simultaneously uphold and destroy illusions.

In 2009, Kneffel presented an exhibition at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld in Germany, housed in a pair of modernist villas designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and named for their former owners, Hermann Lange and Josef Esters. Intrigued by the process of transformation by which these domestic dwellings became art museums, Kneffel commenced work on a highly evocative series of paintings—which concludes with the current exhibition. In Mies's buildings and their histories she had found not only potent subject matter but also a conceptual equivalent that allowed her to work through her own concerns as a painter.

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