We have the great pleasure of presenting a series of paintings by the German artist Thoralf Knobloch for the first time at Galleri Flach.
Thoralf Knobloch belongs to an interesting and successful generation of artists that studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Dresden in the beginning of the 90s. He has, together with other internationally acclaimed artists such as Eberhard Havekost, Frank Nitsche and Thomas Scheibitz, developed a unique, and characteristic way of painting that in a strong and simultaneously scaled down way mediate a mystical and visually seductive imagery.
Thoralf Knobloch’s paintings contain details from sceneries that can belong almost anywhere: road signs, gas stations, simple buildings and boats that can be found all over the world, or in the outskirts of urban environments. Even if one can sense that the motifs are taken from Knoblochs home region of eastern Germany, and from travels in America, it isn’t decisive. Like many other painters of his generation, he works with photography as models, photographs that have been manipulated and are of great importance in the creative process.
Knoblochs works hold a special presence through a timeless, serene and occasional shimmering light. It creates a focus on certain details where the sometimes sharply cropped motifs can be seen as fragments from a larger context. Together, the paintings convey a story reminding of film stills from a road movie. They express a tension-filled silence and suspense, an experience of standing before a frozen moment that can be dissolved at any time, and shift into a new focus.
The paintings light creates a special and melancholy feeling, reminiscent of romantic modernists such as Edward Hopper. There is serenity and a contemplative feeling that is expressed through the elaborately painted details and the colour-intensity and outlines. There is also an interesting play between the division of the vertical and horizontal lines. Thoralf Knobloch’s works are an existential experience and they make clear how grandiose painting can bring out new perspectives in an everyday milieu.
In the exhibition at Galleri Flach a selection of paintings from resent years are presented. Thoralf Knobloch was born in Bautzen in 1962; he lives and works in Berlin. Recent exhibitions: Art Museum Dieselkraftwerk Cottbus, Germany (2012), Wilkinson Gallery, London (2011), Galerie Gebr. Lehmann (2010) Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York (2009).. Upcoming exhibition: Städtische Galerie Dresden, (2013).
