mit der Linie ziehen. 1989–2014: PACO KNÖLLER

With the exhibition, Paco Knöller. mit der Linie ziehen. 1989-2014, Galerie Thomas Schulte is proud to present the first comprehensive and critical overview of the drawings conceived by one of Germany’s most preeminent graphic artists throughout the last 25 years.

The concentrated selection is divided into seven chapters, over seven periods, and arranged across seven walls, providing a distinct optical link and showing the affiliation among the works which were created in the long span of more than two decades. It reveals a clearly formulated, artistic conception and practice established over time. The exhibited drawings are the result of an in depth involvement with drawing as a medium. They are taken from great creative potential and form the basis for a long process of searching and experiencing.

Already in the 1970’s as a student in the class of Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Academy, Paco Knöller realized that drawing is an “ancient instrument, with which to inquire into the world and simultaneously present one’s own view of the world”. In this sense Knöller composes and constructs his drawings prudently, yet unrestrained. He is aware of the fact that the drawn line should not just serve the means of pictorial illusion or illustration, or contrarily function only as an expression reduced to a mere gesture. His process of drawing much more seems to consciously follow Cy Twombly in his opinion of the line as the sensation of its own fruition, the embodiment of its self.

Consequently, in his painterly work, Paco Knöller inquires into not just the symbiotic relationship between the line and color, but also into that of the line and the surface, and in this sense, penetrates the almost opposing force of linearity and image space.

In his drawings, specifically this image space acts simultaneously as a kind of (theatrical) set, in front of which the graphic symbols bundle, cross, twist, and burst; turn into surfaces, beams and dots, documenting energetically charged traces of ephemerally uniting and dispersing movements. Lines, dots, and surface alternate and condense into abstract bodies. Fragments suggest a face, eyes, or hands, yet remain abstract and detached from a concrete narrative. Here the Beuysian approach is evident in Paco Knöller’s practiced coalescence with nature, which leads to the translation of experiences and fragments of reality into an abstract handwriting.  His drawings visualize the formation of entities from experience of natural phenomena and show how from something limited, something limitless emerges. Associations of created themes occasionally serve as the title of his series and groups of works, but mostly appear only as a reflexion.

Please see here for online catalogue.