Taking the poem by the American poet Elizabeth Bishop as its starting point, the exhibition Silke Otto-Knapp / Carl Fredrik Hill. Questions of Travel (Wien) brings together works by two artists who, each within their own genre, intensively examine the depiction of landscapes and the interweaving of body and space. The artist Silke Otto-Knapp draws on the codes of the stage-like quality of the glass exhibition space. Together, the artist’s works and the urban outdoor space create a frame of reference that quotes and reflects the iconographic architecture of the site in a multi-levelled manner. In this sense Otto-Knapp’s almost monochrome landscape images, reminiscent of stage scenery, are concentrated zones of both nature and culture in which gardens expand to fill the picture and clusters of buildings form atmospheric scenes.
In addition, the exhibition features drawings by the Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Hill (1849–1911), who also worked intensively with the stage and used this to create a scenography of expressive self-inquiry.
Parallel to the Vienna exhibition, a further exhibition by the artist entitled Questions of Travel (Fogo Island) is being presented at Fogo Island Gallery in Newfoundland, Canada. The two exhibitions in Vienna and Fogo Island are linked by an exhibition catalogue published by Sternberg Press, which deals with the work of Silke Otto-Knapp. The book features essays by Vanessa Joan Müller and Susan Morgan and an interview of Silke Otto-Knapp by Nicolaus Schafhausen.
Curator: Martin Walkner