texts

Lena Knilli

Fatima Naqvi (Yale University), 2023

 

Lena Knilli’s works are exercises in spiritual architectonics. She begins from the sites of our most intimate experiences—homes, churches, clothes—and overlays their floor plans with the “architecture” of our bodies—faces, hands, skulls. Knilli is interested in the way in which spaces shelter us and how they become meaningful. Her thick contour lines point us to the hard surfaces and clear boundaries circumscribing our lives and our movements, and to the limitations of our embodiment. But her radiant color combinations, with their extraordinary luminescence, provide a flicker of hope in that very circumscription. We move within these closed sites, but our desires and imagination transport us elsewhere: into the portals on the horizon in the series “I am Still Looking for the Door”; into the innocent embryos attached by umbilical cords, despite empty tables in a mean world (“Zu Tisch”/ “Dinner is served”). In her images we are bounded by uniform fields of color and stenciled planes, yet we seek connections beyond these confinements. We remain chronically, but not cruelly, optimistic. New relationships can be found in the most surprising places. The floor plans of sacred architecture, for instance, conform to the outlines of women’s clothing. The pelvic bones create a refuge. The canyons of the American West are transformed into chutes, transporting our gaze to the horizon. Knilli suggests that we do not know the places of our lives deeply enough. Once we try to see them in different contexts, they become intimately transcendent. They are sites of exposure—and sanctuaries.

The black dots in certain paintings mark the “starry skies above” and the “moral law within” (Kant); humans always stand in a relationship to both the out- and inside. The burning questions of our time—what solidarity means, how we show empathy, and where we intervene—are continually present. In such circumstances, Knilli’s works do not fall prey to indecisiveness; they do not vacillate. There is a moral clarity in the distinct shape, the bold contour, the vivid juxtaposition. And there is an ethical imperative in the heavenly constellations brought down to earth.

texts

Lena Knilli

Fatima Naqvi (Yale University), 2023

 

Lena Knilli’s works are exercises in spiritual architectonics. She begins from the sites of our most intimate experiences—homes, churches, clothes—and overlays their floor plans with the “architecture” of our bodies—faces, hands, skulls. Knilli is interested in the way in which spaces shelter us and how they become meaningful. Her thick contour lines point us to the hard surfaces and clear boundaries circumscribing our lives and our movements, and to the limitations of our embodiment. But her radiant color combinations, with their extraordinary luminescence, provide a flicker of hope in that very circumscription. We move within these closed sites, but our desires and imagination transport us elsewhere: into the portals on the horizon in the series “I am Still Looking for the Door”; into the innocent embryos attached by umbilical cords, despite empty tables in a mean world (“Zu Tisch”/ “Dinner is served”). In her images we are bounded by uniform fields of color and stenciled planes, yet we seek connections beyond these confinements. We remain chronically, but not cruelly, optimistic. New relationships can be found in the most surprising places. The floor plans of sacred architecture, for instance, conform to the outlines of women’s clothing. The pelvic bones create a refuge. The canyons of the American West are transformed into chutes, transporting our gaze to the horizon. Knilli suggests that we do not know the places of our lives deeply enough. Once we try to see them in different contexts, they become intimately transcendent. They are sites of exposure—and sanctuaries.

The black dots in certain paintings mark the “starry skies above” and the “moral law within” (Kant); humans always stand in a relationship to both the out- and inside. The burning questions of our time—what solidarity means, how we show empathy, and where we intervene—are continually present. In such circumstances, Knilli’s works do not fall prey to indecisiveness; they do not vacillate. There is a moral clarity in the distinct shape, the bold contour, the vivid juxtaposition. And there is an ethical imperative in the heavenly constellations brought down to earth.

Lena Knilli
Lena Knilli