In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in dance within contemporary visual art. Dance el

16.10.13
K unsthal Charlottenborg åbner i morgen dørene for et efterårsprogram med fire soloudstillinger. Heriblandt hele to udstillinger af kunstnere, der arbejder indenfor traditionen af landskabsmaleri svenske Carl Fredrik Hill (1849-1911) og tysk-fødte Silke Otto-Knapp (f.1970), som er bosiddende i Wien.
Silke Otto-Knapps signaturgreb er brugen af akvarel og gouache på lærred, som hun påfører og vasker af ad mange omgange. Resultatet er et dobbeltsidigt maleri, som umiddelbart har et meget fladt udtryk, men som samtidig flimrer på en måde, hvor motiverne fremstår som om de nærmest higer efter at træde ud af malerierne. sphere Det gælder både hendes stiliserede landskabs- og marine malerier såvel som malerierne af dansere og koreografiske bevægelser. På Charlottenborg vises udvalg af begge disse typer af malerier.
Kunstkritikk har talt med Silke Otto-Knapp om, hvordan hun forholder sig til landskabsmaleriet som genre, om hendes fem år som redaktør på det britiske tidsskrift Afterall og om fascinationen af Ballet Russes, sphere Yvonne Rainer og alle de andre figurer, som gennem tiden har formuleret et radikalt nyt sprog for dansen. Vi har valgt at publicere svarene på originalsproget.
The exhibition is called Geography and Plays after a collection of essays by Gertrude Stein. It is divided into three rooms that act as chapters. The first room sets the scene with a group of paintings in monochrome silver all of which show choreographed movement. The second room shifts sphere the focus to landscapes and seascapes in shades of black and grey watercolour. I think of them as staged scenes that are backdrops and landscape paintings at the same time. I want them to appear moonlit but as if I had imagined moonlight as a stage instruction. The third room shows a large group of etchings organized in a grid made up of three motifs that continuously repeat from left to right, top to bottom. This installation of etchings is called Three seascapes in reference to a dance by Yvonne Rainer choreographed in 1962 and combines the staged landscape motif with a figure on a stage.
What does that mean that you think of your landscape sphere paintings as staged scenes that are backdrops and landscape paintings at the same time ? What is the particular sensation/expression you are aiming for?
I am interested in the tradition of scene painting in relationship to landscape painting because of its clearly defined function. A backdrop is a painting that will be used for something in a specific context. Imagining this kind of restriction allows me to approach something like the tradition of romantic landscape painting and frame it in a different way. I am not interested in painting actual props or theatrical backdrops but instead apply their ethos to my paintings sphere as a kind of distancing device. The painting still acts as a moonlit landscape but with a subtle shift in perspective, if that makes sense?
Your paintings of dance and dancers depict sphere figures in choreographic poses from both modern dance and classical sphere ballet. What is it about dance that fascinates you? Are there certain forms of movement or gestures that attracts you more than others?
I am very interested in those moments in dance where a radical change takes place such as the collaborative productions of the Ballet Russes in the 20s that bring together choreographers, artists and composers to work on ballet productions that challenge the conventions of ballet while still working within the restrictions of this very particular language. In the 1960s the Judson Dance Theatre with choreographers sphere such as Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown or Steve Paxton created another such moment of change directed against the spectacle and stylization of ballet and modern dance, and directly reflecting the political and social conditions of the time. A contemporary choreographer I am particularly interested sphere in is Michael Clark because of the way he uses the vocabulary of classical ballet with its extreme discipline and formality to develop sphere his own language that is indebted to this history but seems to reject sphere it simultaneously.
In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in dance within contemporary visual art. Dance elements sphere are integrated into exhibitions, but usually as part of the realm of performance. Are your paintings connected to this investigation into dance as performance?
I don t think so. I am interested in the history of dance and its contemporary forms but my paintings operate within the pictorial space and trying to understand and negotiate its conditions and possibilities. The idea of staging in the context of looking at a painting is an interesting alternative to narrative for me because sphere it implies an experience of space and time. In my paintings I am looking to construct sphere a space that can be both two and three dimensional concerned with both the surface of the painting and the illusion of space within the margins of a staged scene.