Daniel Knorr: Minimal Change
Galleria Fonti is pleased to present Minimal Change, Daniel Knorr's fifth solo exhibition with the gallery.
Minimal Change brings together recent wall sculptures that are part of two series developed over the last years: Minimal Changes and Depression Elevations.
Minimal Change reflects on Minimal Art and the changing conditions that fostered its development in the 1960s. At the heart of minimalism is a process of industrialisation of natural resources: materials already present in nature are modified and organised according to measures, geometries, scales and systems established by the artist. At the time, there was no awareness of the finiteness of natural resources and the imbalance between their availability and the satisfaction of needs triggered by consumerism. Minimal Change is a meditation on this imbalance and its consequences, such as climate change, which the artist tries to make visible through the manipulation of raw materials. Copper and stainless steel sheets cut in the same size have been exposed to a source of intense heat, bending, collapsing and taking on different colours. Others in brass, of the same size, were soaked in acid, which initiated the oxidation of the metal. Altogether, they show the rigour of a system, that of repetition, but also the variability of the reaction of materials to 'external aggressions'.
Depression Elevation originated in Los Angeles and was expanded to several cities, including Paris, Vienna, Bonn, Hong Kong and Athens. Knorr explores the surface of the urban landscape by making resin sculptures from casts of potholes and irregularities in city streets. In the public infrastructure, Knorr searches for irregularities, imperfections and negligence, making the hidden aspects of our industrial age visible with bright colours that refer to the Light and Space movement.
On show are some Depression Elevations made in Berlin. One with an oblong shape made in Tempelhof, a former airport famous for the events of the Airlift between '48 and '49 and now converted into an urban park, some smaller ones made in different parts of the city where the Wall once stood.
Two other sculptures were made in natural landscapes: on the bed of a river made visible due to high temperatures and dryness and on the rocky part of a mountain, which emerged due to the recession of glaciers.
These sculptures are the artist's reactions to events he himself has experienced, namely those determined by global warming. By taking nature as their own realm, they move in the direction of Minimal Changes and meditate with them on how nature is altered in reaction to the structure of capitalist society, with changes that are only apparently minimal - in the morphology of landscapes, in the climate, in the hydrogeological balance - but which in reality are unequivocal and unprecedented in the history of mankind.
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Galleria Fonti is pleased to present Minimal Change, Daniel Knorr's fifth solo exhibition with the gallery.
Minimal Change brings together recent wall sculptures that are part of two series developed over the last years: Minimal Changes and Depression Elevations.
Minimal Change reflects on Minimal Art and the changing conditions that fostered its development in the 1960s. At the heart of minimalism is a process of industrialisation of natural resources: materials already present in nature are modified and organised according to measures, geometries, scales and systems established by the artist. At the time, there was no awareness of the finiteness of natural resources and the imbalance between their availability and the satisfaction of needs triggered by consumerism. Minimal Change is a meditation on this imbalance and its consequences, such as climate change, which the artist tries to make visible through the manipulation of raw materials. Copper and stainless steel sheets cut in the same size have been exposed to a source of intense heat, bending, collapsing and taking on different colours. Others in brass, of the same size, were soaked in acid, which initiated the oxidation of the metal. Altogether, they show the rigour of a system, that of repetition, but also the variability of the reaction of materials to 'external aggressions'.
Depression Elevation originated in Los Angeles and was expanded to several cities, including Paris, Vienna, Bonn, Hong Kong and Athens. Knorr explores the surface of the urban landscape by making resin sculptures from casts of potholes and irregularities in city streets. In the public infrastructure, Knorr searches for irregularities, imperfections and negligence, making the hidden aspects of our industrial age visible with bright colours that refer to the Light and Space movement.
On show are some Depression Elevations made in Berlin. One with an oblong shape made in Tempelhof, a former airport famous for the events of the Airlift between '48 and '49 and now converted into an urban park, some smaller ones made in different parts of the city where the Wall once stood.
Two other sculptures were made in natural landscapes: on the bed of a river made visible due to high temperatures and dryness and on the rocky part of a mountain, which emerged due to the recession of glaciers.
These sculptures are the artist's reactions to events he himself has experienced, namely those determined by global warming. By taking nature as their own realm, they move in the direction of Minimal Changes and meditate with them on how nature is altered in reaction to the structure of capitalist society, with changes that are only apparently minimal - in the morphology of landscapes, in the climate, in the hydrogeological balance - but which in reality are unequivocal and unprecedented in the history of mankind.
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