Karen Knorr

The gallery Les filles du calvaire in Paris is happy to present two photographic series by Karen Knorr: Sanctuary and Spirits.

In her recent magical photographic series (taken in private palaces and public collections) Sanctuary and Spirits she explores the boundaries between animals and humans in a world that has become relentlessly materialistic and unconcerned by the implications of unlimited consumerism.

In Sanctuary, Large scale photographs feature the paintings and the interiors of The Wallace Collection in an unsettling narration involving wolves, apes and exotic birds. These works both allude to allegorical traditions that can be found in paintings and interrogate the boundaries between the human and non-human.

In Spirits the photographs were taken in response to a landscape project commission in 2001 proposed by the Marcovaldo Association in based in Northern Italy near Caraglio. Karen Knorr photographed the interiors of a church, theatre and palace in Savigliano to which she added such incongruous elements such as cranes, pheasants and owls, birds of that particular region of Italy which invade the architectural interiors. The titles allude to religious paintings of the 16 and 17th century.

Nathalie Leleu, an Art critic based in Paris has recently wrote of this work: “The image lands on the threshold of space like logos opening time. For the image maker and the storyteller everything is about knowing how these tools of meaning will manage to cross this threshold to arrive at the landscape and story. These images are inventions, making visible the invisible leading to an imaginary world inhabited by spirits. Knorr’s visual strategy is to use the essence of these representations, putting into perspective beings and objects which exist in the virtual space of the imagination. “ The Nature in Knorr’s photographs exists in a subliminal visionary space between blinded vision and intuition, a sort of noumenal world made material.

Karen Knorr’s work is in private and public collections worldwide. Her work can be seen also at: www.karenknorr.com. A new book published by Black Dog called Genii Loci present new developments in the work of this influential photographer.