‘BIG GIRL’ is Imi Knoebel’s new exhibition at Ehrhardt Flórez Gallery.
Colour, form and matter are fundamental questions in the artist’s work.
The relationship between painting, space and spectator, and, by extension, the interactions between the public and the essential conditions of art and the world, underpin an exhibition that features varied recent works and series: two pieces from his so-called Standing Paintings, made on thin sheets of aluminium slightly separated from the wall, resting on the floor with the help of the aluminium structures and profiles the artist used for pictorial support in previous works; a monochrome, floating and almost resistance-free work from his Schnitt series, hung on the wall yet separated from it by a small distance, where certain cuts fragment the pictorial surface; and finally three pieces from his BIG GIRL series which gives the exhibition its title, and which, smaller than the others, adhere closely to the wall without free space between, absorbing this space in the thickness and density of the solid aluminium which contrasts with the lightness of the other works on display.

The exhibition is completed in two other rooms with the geometric rhythms of his Parkhaus and Elemente series, while an as yet unseen group of twelve acrylic works on plastic sheets reveal different versions of the concept of the figure. These rapidly executed floating bodies are in part an explanation of the nature of his work, where a more organic workmanship becomes visible, ranging from opaque to transparent, from ferrous to fluorescent, and from matte to glossy.

Starting from a historical tradition of painting itself, of geometry and of certain avant-garde movements, Imi Knoebel, since his beginnings at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, has placed himself within limits which constantly open up questions about the essence of art, aesthetics, form and colour, while always advancing towards the new. Now, with a coherent logic in relation to his previous works, he reveals yet another episode in a career decorated with milestones. Starting from basic yet very precise elements, sometimes repeated, sometimes discovered and explored by other artists, Knoebel reveals ongoing discoveries in which each question in his hands becomes an artefact to be examined for a new reading. Whether in terms of colour, form or position, Knoebel delves into art’s sensory dimension. Small variations over time, gestures of great aesthetic and spatial transcendence, become transformative revelations, giving individual elements or the union of several in constellations in a specific place or position an impact on the most basic aspects of our human condition.

Imi Knoebel’s work encompasses notions of order and chaos. His work invokes primal sensations in which rhythm, tempo and melody are one and the same. Knoebel’s ability to let his works define a space is astonishing. The resonance and reverberation of his works, of his forms embodied in a colour inseparable from form (as developed early on in his relationship with Blinky Palermo), float and occupy the space in such a way as to go far beyond the physical, or rather, to make seemingly intangible space physical.