Silke Otto-Knapp

Silke Otto-Knapp (1970 – 2022) was born in Osnabrück, majored in cultural studies at the University of Hildesheim and received her MFA from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Otto-Knapp worked in the medium of watercolor on canvas and produced landscape paintings as well as paintings based on historical documentations of stage design and performance. Unlike traditional watercolorists, Otto-Knapp applied layers of watercolor that are washed down and then applied anew. These countless coats produce the coexistence of conflicting concepts of space – surface and depth, contour and corporeality, distance and closeness, reality and figurativeness – which give rise to a tension between the motif and the picture surface. She has held solo exhibitions at the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2020); the Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2017); the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2015); the Kunsthalle Wien and the Camden Arts Centre, London (2014); the Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2013); the Kunstverein Munich (2010); and the Tate Britain, London (2005). She has also participated in many group exhibitions, including Michael Clark “Cosmic Dancer,” Barbican Centre Art Gallery, London (2020); “Performer and Participant,” Tate Modern, London (2019); the Liverpool Biennial 2018, Beautiful world where are you? ; “Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only,” the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); “Sacré 101 – An Exhibition Based on The Rite of Spring,” the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2014); “Dance/Draw,” the ICA, Boston, MA (2011); and the 9th International Istanbul Biennial (2005).