Danziger Gallery in New York is pleased to present a booth featuring photographs by German artist Karen Knorr at the Art Dealers Association of America Art Fair 2021 (ADAA). As part of the event, the gallery's Los Angeles branch will present Knorr's bestiary in a solo exhibition beginning November 3. The exhibition focuses on works featuring her constructed animal photographs taken in India between 2003 and 2021. These India Song images were previously presented in a solo exhibition at Tate Britain in London in 2015. Four of the photographs were also featured in the 2019 exhibition Bestiaries at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where Knorr was one of only two contemporary artists featured.
In Knorr's universe, animals are freed from narrative constraints, such as those standard in fables: they move freely in human territory, drawing attention to the gap between nature and culture, but they neither teach lessons nor convey morals. The animals invade temples and palaces, where they symbolize raw nature, which is only granted access to man-made, cultural places with the help of such manipulated representations. Although Knorr's images give the appearance of traditional photography, they challenge reality with the incongruity of these scenes.
Karen Knorr was born in 1954 in Frankfurt, Germany, grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and studied in Paris and London. She has lived in England since the 1970s. Her work has been exhibited around the world, most recently at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016), the MultiMedia Museum, Moscow (2016), and the Fox Talbot Museum, Lacock, UK (2018).
