Julian-Jakob Kneer at Lucas Hirsch

Artist: Julian-Jakob Kneer

Exhibition title: ornament sublime

Venue: Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf, Germany

Date: May 25 – July 12, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf

They stand in the space, in a garden of impenetrable shadow and hard light, fatal to the charm exuded by the life of flowers, with discretely encrusted diamonds and strings or rings or chains or crowns of thick pearls enclosing their swelling and stretching bodies, tense and tight in sublime hardening and contempt, their wood brittle and splitting, ducking and stiﬀening at the same time, riddled with hostile metallic spikes and stakes that testify to their infinite humility, as if despotic power had withdrawn into the unique pattern of adornment, into the exhibition of an empty fortress or the motionless dance of monuments that no longer demand a ministry of respect but seek the dumb and blind gaze of devotion, at the limit where they turn into ornaments for the first time, their accomplishment lying in their inability to touch themselves and hence create signification.

–Alexander García Düttmann

In his artistic practice Kneer investigates the contingency of inherited sociocultural symbol- and allocation-systems. Central to his work is the examination of the subconscious and ‘abnormal/ pathological’ deviances as judged from a bourgeois-normative perspective. This includes obscure bodily practices (paraphilia, fetishes) as well as artefacts and phenomena depicted from everyday- and popular culture, commonly situated beyond ‘good taste’ (kitsch/camp, Mannerism).

Ambivalence is an important keyword to his practice as it forms irritating syntheses of ‘high’- and subcultural references, tradition and presence, forming an unprejudiced juxtaposition of seemingly opposite aesthetics, evoking coincidental feelings of desire and repulsion.

Recent projects include:

Cloak of Mercy at Horse & Pony (group, Berlin 2019); Gentle Heterodoxy – Social Body and its Enchantments at ﬀfriedrich (group, Frankfurt am Main 2018); wicked games at ROOM E-10 27 @ Center (solo, Berlin 2018); A night in Alexander (group, online, 2018); Jugend ist Trunkenheit ohne Wein at BIKINI (solo, Basel 2018); sub rosa at 1.1 (solo, Basel 2017); GTdaHÖ at Ambassador****** (group, curated by Kneer, Vienna 2017); Ushirode at Geddert Hronjec Collection (solo, Berlin 2017); rule#34 as Oslo10’s fifth web-residency (solo in collab. w/ Blue Stork, Basel 2017); International blood drinker at Gärtnergasse (duo w/ Clémence de La Tour du Pin, Vienna 2016). Upcoming projects include:

Gruppe expo (ongoing online and oﬄine curatorial program by Kneer); L’amour at Fetisch-Hof (group, curated by Tzvetnik, Berlin 2019); a solo at Limbo (Berlin 2019); a performance w/ Ella Plevin and Theresa Patzschke (PSF Berlin 2019) and a collaborative solo at PS120 (Berlin 2019).

Julian-Jakob Kneer, ornament sublime, 2019, exhibition view, Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf

Julian-Jakob Kneer, ornament sublime, 2019, Lathed oak wood, 70 x Ø 27 cm

Julian-Jakob Kneer, ornament sublime, 2019, exhibition view, Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf

Julian-Jakob Kneer, ornament sublime, 2019, Lathed oak wood, metal beads, Swarovski rhinestones, 85 x Ø 45 cm

Julian-Jakob Kneer, ornament sublime, 2019, exhibition view, Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf

Julian-Jakob Kneer, ornament sublime, 2019, Lathed oak wood, metal beads, metal studs, 100 x Ø 29 cm

Julian-Jakob Kneer, ornament sublime, 2019, exhibition view, Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf

Julian-Jakob Kneer, ornament sublime, 2019, Lathed oak wood, metal beads, metal studs, 115 x Ø 45 cm

Julian-Jakob Kneer, ornament sublime, 2019, Lathed oak wood, metal beads, Swarovski rhinestones, 90 x Ø 30 cm

Julian-Jakob Kneer, ornament sublime, 2019, exhibition view, Lucas Hirsch, Düsseldorf