The layered, painterly works of Braunschweig, Germany-based abstract painter Manuela Karin Knaut hover between the derelict and the precious.
Their uncertain stillness—a frozen snapshot of tenuous balance in a chaotic world—evokes something both ancient and fleeting: a celebration of unexpected relationships between textures, gestures, colours and lines. Knaut builds her compositions slowly over time, adding layers of colours and materials then scraping them away, working them over and over. Gestural markings intermingle with bits of images taken from life, which are then rubbed away, transformed, abstracted and layered again. Traditional paints are mixed with everyday materials like glue, fabric, scraps of photos, and bits of discarded paper, lending her paintings to some physical and visual qualities as the modern environments that inspire her. The work is only considered finished when “the story of the painting has been told,” a moment of quiet balance that comes along unexpectedly at times. Knaut then removes the painting from the chaos of the studio and hangs it on a wall for one last moment of contemplation before it is finally signed. The intuitive, layered approach that Knaut brings to her paintings echoes her own desire to break out of her comfort zone, mentally and physically. Her search for a polyrhythmic visual language, in which a multitude of colours, textures and materials intermingle, is informed by her extensive world travels. She is as inspired by the stories of the people she meets as she is by what she calls the “charming inperfections” of the places she visits: the dilapidated surfaces of urban walls; or the colourful abundance and chaotic energy of street life. Just as she seeks out confrontations with the untamed aspects of her existence outside of the studio, Knaut strives to bring that same sense of adventure and uncertainty into each of her paintings. The tension that arises between that duality, between what is chosen, and what is unexpected, is at the heart of the work.
