Marcus Knupp 'Pink Moon', acrylic on canvas, 2007 / courtesy DUVE Berlin
Tom Felber for ceative face Magazine
Marcus Knupp's paintings and drawings set-up fantastical dream-scapes and narrative scenes that seem multi-layered and eclectic. Bringing together an extensive spectrum of found source material, he draws on imaginary familiar from contemporary and historical film and TV, pop music, fashion, comics, graffiti, album-cover-art and architecture. The elements, objects and figures that populate his scenes seems dissociated from each other yet form pictorial spaces registering contemporary myth and desires in a unique, intuitive way. Typically his landscapes are interspersed with architectural structures or encoded words that confer a secondary, symbolic dimension making them seem like SF-messages transmitted from another world.
Knupp, now 30 years old, lives and works alternately in Berlin, New York and Los Angeles. Born 1978 in Wiesbaden, Germany, to American parents his background can be considered bi-national having spent his childhood living in Germany. In the age of 13, Knupp returned to the United States living there until 2005. He got his BA at the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 2000. Marcus Knupp's work has been shown in a solo show at Arndt & Partner, Zürich and included in numerous group shows including Peres Projects (Los Angeles, USA), Priska C. Juschka Fine Art (New York, USA), Citric Gallery (Brescia, Italy) and The Breeder (Athens, Greece).
About his work Marcus Knupp says: "Making a work of art is both a conscious choice and an imbedded psychological need. When engaged with my work the main focus is to execute as quickly as possible the stem impulse to create, the initial idea once it has accrued in the imagination. I place a great deal of faith in the sub-conscious and find I'm endlessly curious with its abstract dimensions and puzzles. The style and images I use are based on a visual language experienced while in my childhood, which are now coupled with insights and realizations about our world gained through the simple act of growing and learning. My desire is not to conform any one idea into a literal form but rather to allow for a more organic intuitive use of images and expressive modes."
Founded in September 2007 by Alexander Duve the gallery DUVE Berlin is located close to the Hamburger Bahnhof on Invalidenstraße 90 in Berlin Mitte. DUVE Berlin's creative and operational direction is to discover and establish young, innovative artist positions and to offer those artists a platform to present themselves to the art world. „The art we exhibit always stands in a close context of our personal environment. We exhibit with what we can identify with - our generation, culture, interests and desires. All our artists are personalities with whom we share a certain approach to art: a way of living and thinking, a certain way of capturing ideas emerging in our society and a way of translating those ideas into practise. And there are still so many extremely gifted and interesting young artists who have no gallery representation and also ambitious collectors who are in search of the new and unseen - to these groups we feel obliged. Our program encloses all media from painting, drawing and sculpture, up to photography and video. But DUVE Berlin is more than that. We organise performances, lectures and parties that underline our passion for what we do with the gallery", says Alexander Duve. With SARAH OPPENHEIMER P21 x P41 another spectacular exhibition opens today at DUVE Berlin.
