Karen Knorr

Contemplation of the Essential Forms

Signed, numbered 3/5 and dated 2005 on a label on the reverse
Cibachrome glossy print
91 x 91 cm (35¾ x 35 ¾ in)
99 x 99 cm (39 x 39 in) – framed

Exhibited:
Manchester, Holden Gallery & London, PM Gallery, Pitzhanger Manor, Wundercamera, 2013-2014

Shot in Chiswick House, the present work is one of a series of 17 large scale Cibachrome photographs Karen completed in 1986 presented in black frames with engraved brass plaques alluding to received ideas of beauty and taste in British culture.

Titled Connoisseurs, the series was also shot at five locations: Osterley House, Sir John Soane’s Museum, Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum as well as Chiswick House. Featuring both inanimate elements and staged events, Karen uses captions and accompanying text in the series to slow down consumption of the image. The project was one of her earliest essays to explore cultural heritage and its ideological underpinnings, since when questions concerning post-colonialism and its relationship to aesthetics have become a recurring theme in her work.

The Connoisseurs series, including the present image, was first unveiled in Paris in 1987 at La Remise du Parc Gallery and La Musée D’Art de la Ville de Paris. Since then the series has been exhibited widely including at Riverside Studios (1987); Camerawork (1989; catalogue edited by Olivier Richon and John Berger); Ikon Gallery (1989) and Salama Caro Gallery, London. It has also been variously published including in Karen Knorr, interviewed by Antonio Guzman, Nantes 1989 and Karen Knorr, Marks of Distinction, Thames and Hudson, London, 1991

Born in Germany, raised in Puerto Rico and educated in Paris and London, Karen is widely represented in galleries in New York, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Rome, Singapore and Hong Kong. Currently Professor of Photography at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, Surrey, her work has been the subject of multiple exhibitions, and commissions and projects have taken her around the world. She won the Vth International Photography Pilar Citoler Prize in 2011, was nominated for the Deutsche Börse in 2011 and 2012, and the Prix Pictet in 2012 and 2018. Her work is in collections internationally, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Tate, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. She was appointed an HonsFRPS in 2018.

Donated by the artist.