Silke Otto-Knapp
Overduin and Kite, Los Angeles, USA
Silke Otto-Knapp, Costumes (A room in Yaroslavna’s palace) (2008)
For her debut Los Angeles show, Silke Otto-Knapp presents seven paintings, five of which are based on Russian choreographer Bronislava Nijinska’s ballets. Using watercolour on canvas, Otto-Knapp suffuses her easel-sized works with colour, predominantly silver, so that the foreground and background merge into a single field. But it is also what she washes away and removes that creates these small works that are flat in execution, yet filled with layers of depth.
Rehearsal for Les Noces, first tableau (2008)
Conceived between 1914 and 1921, when Modernist painting often crossed paths with ballet, Nijinska’s choreography sought to apply the techniques of constructivism and cubism to movement. This formal awareness lends itself perfectly to paintings, as in Rehearsal for Les Noces, first tableau (2008), which depicts a group of figures surrounding a central dancer. Flanked four on each side, these dancers raise their arms up to frame the central figure, creating a tiny frieze of blank-faced women. In Winterlong (2008), the same group hold their arms down in a slightly different pose; the paint shimmers, and, though the original narrative meaning of the dance is lost, their presence retains a kind of meaning, evoking some sacred ritual or ceremony. These are not the intimate dancer’s views from the wings, as with Degas, for example, but those of the choreographer, sitting a dozen rows back, dead centre, watching her ideas take form.
Group (Purple Dress) (2008-9)
Once your eye gets used to navigating the diaphanous layers of sheen, it is somewhat jarring when Otto-Knapp punches up the colour. The largest work in the show, Group (Purple Dress) (2008-9), lays out a smattering of high-end fashion outfits from the ‘50s, demonstrating Otto-Knapp’s skills as a colourist, with the aforementioned purple dress bleeding through its confines to fill the surrounding space with chroma. This knack for colour works best when paired with her sliver technique, as in Costumes (A room in Yaroslavna’s palace) (2008), in which a pierrot in hat and costume and two female dancers are blushed with pale yellow, salmon and fuchsia that emanates from the canvas ground, while the crisp silver glazing defines the figures.
Figure (diagonal) (2008)
One of the strongest works is Figure (diagonal) (2008), which depicts a dancer posed in an arabesque. Seen in raking light, the figure looks as though it is carved from the canvas, as sharp as an Art Deco motif, the space around it aglow with a warm platinum shine. Walk back to the right, the fore/background shifts back to a dull metallic grey, and the sharp figure is now just the white ground with some residual pigment which has been wiped away to reveal soft pale thighs, head and feet. The change is remarkable, yet the means are so simple. Figure (half-bending) (2008) is brushier still, but now the paired-down beauty leans down to touch the ground with a languid arm. Otto-Knapp’s meditations on dance have served her well, and it will be interesting to see what will come next once she lets the curtain fall on this subject. For now, however, maybe these paintings will inspire another dancer’s eye, and keep this graceful conversation going.
Jeffrey Ryan
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