Silke Otto-Knapp (b. 1970, Osnabrück, Germany) is a painter who works in the medium of watercolor on canvas. Otto-Knapp produces landscape paintings as well as paintings based on historical documentations of stage design and performance. Unlike traditional watercolorists, Otto-Knapp applies layers of watercolor that are washed down and then applied anew. These countless coats produce the coexistence of conflicting concepts of space – surface and depth, contour and corporeality, distance and closeness, reality and figurativeness – which give rise to a tension between the motif and the picture surface.
The painting on view was made on Fogo Island, Newfoundland. While spending time there, Otto-Knapp became very interested in the concept of an island, a landmass surrounded by the sea, as a historical motif. Using black and grey watercolor pigments, the artist conflates frontal and aerial views of the island, allowing the pictorial space to remain unstable and the viewer to shift perspectives depending on their position in relation to the painting.
Silke Otto-Knapp majored in cultural studies at the University of Hildesheim and received her MFA from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. She is currently based in Los Angeles. She has held solo exhibitions at Museo Marino Marini, Florence, Fogo Island Arts, Fogo, Canada, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, and Camden Art Center, London (2014); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2013); Kunstverein Munich (2010); and Tate Britain, London (2005). She has also participated in many group exhibitions, including “Sacré 101 – An Exhibition Based on the Rite of Spring,” Migros Museum, Zurich (2014); “Dance/Draw,” ICA, Boston; “Watercolour,” Tate Britain, London (2011); and the 9th International Istanbul Biennial (2005). Her works are included in the public collections such as Berkeley Art Museum, the Hammer Collection, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Serralves Museum and Van Abbemuseum.
