New Works

In his first solo exhibition at KM, Heinz Peter Knes is showing eleven photographs and a film. In the exhibited works, he creates a unique balance between structures that reach into the space and only give the viewer a fragmentary insight into what lies behind them. Diagonal grids and net structures lead out of the pictorial space and refer to the gap between the viewer and the image. Through this composition, Knes creates a tension between the image and the gallery space. Cold, repellent surfaces mark boundaries in the space, which the artist opens up by looking at gaps in the structures, thus placing the possibility of transgression in the picture. In the photographs that Heinz Peter Knes visibly manipulates, paints with retouched colour or perforates using the cut-out technique, he reveals the constructed nature of his images, of photography in general. The subject of the gap, the overpainting, are extensions of the pictorial space and yet carry within them a gesture of loss and transience. The manipulation of the images also makes the viewer question the limits of perception and what has disappeared. Through the gaps and blurs in his photographs, Knes asserts a wandering identity that gives space to error and questions technological optimisation. Despite the complex composition of his photographs, he works quickly and directly with the spaces in which he moves. Reduction is written on a banner, which he depicts theatrically. This agitprop moment reminds us of the attentiveness required to get close to people. For his photographic approach to an activist for a portrait, Heinz Peter Knes chooses a perspective from below. The figure towers over the centre of the picture. It is the invoked iconic quality that protects the person and conceals them as if in a cocoon, yet at the same time allows them to become a figure for the political struggle. The found immediacy of the moment is particularly evident here, which the artist captures in such a way that the gaze of the portrayed person remains lively and free. This attentive gaze is also evident in the film Death in Venice , which takes the viewer on an aimless journey through urban space. Through the camera angle, the perspective of a seeker, the viewer experiences the immediate attraction of beauty in its most diverse forms. It is Gustav von Aschenbach's absorbed gaze that we follow, revealing an existential loneliness, but also the longing for this feeling gaze to be reciprocated. The works of Heinz Peter Knes lead beyond the pictures and want to free the viewer's gaze. They are an invitation to let the gaze wander, to give in and look openly into the world. Heinz Peter Knes (*1969 in Gemünden/Main) studied photography at FH Dortmund (1993-1999). Recent exhibitions include Touch - Politics of Touch, EMOP, Amtssalon, Berlin (2023), Correspondances, KM, Berlin (2023, curated), very near-sighted but unspectacled, Duane Thomas Gallery, New York (2023, solo), Gesture Studies, Sismógrafo, Porto (2021, solo), Fotografische Arbeit, Künstlerhaus Bremen (2020, solo), Emissaries for things abandoned by Gods, Casa Luis Barragán, Mexico City (2019).