Born in Marl in 1957, Kneffel represents a generation of artists trained in the conceptual rigor associated with German postwar art. As a master student of Gerhard Richter at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, she developed a practice that combines realism with reflection, both literally and metaphorically. Her painstakingly composed, photo-realistic paintings explore perception, transience, and the fragility of representation. Whether hyperrealistic depictions of glossy fruit or interiors behind misted window panes, Kneffel stages a subtle dialog between surface and depth, presence and absence, truth and illusion.

Contemporary meets Modern Art
In “Untitled” (2016), Karin Kneffel transforms the minimalist calm of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Haus Lange into a shimmering field of historical and artistic reflection. Using archive photographs of the once private home of silk manufacturer and art collector Hermann Lange, which were taken around 1930, Kneffel reconstructs the living spaces that were adorned with masterpieces of Modern Art. Three of these works—Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's “Frauen am Potsdamer Platz” (1914), Lesser Ury's “Leipziger Straße” and “Berliner Straße bei Nacht” (both 1889), and Wilhelm Lehmbruck's “Große Sinnende” (1913)—reemerge as luminous beacons, embedded in a historically anchored yet reimagined context.




Folded Time
The canvas of the painting “Untitled” offered here reveals not a mere reconstruction, but a meditation on how art and its meanings travel through time. Kneffel’s technique of applying up to four layers of oil paint creates a mysterious depth effect, as if the viewer were looking through a steamed-up glass pane, that is superimposed with graffiti-like, illusionistic finger drawings reminiscent of both condensation and memory fragments. Only the referenced artworks remain untouched, as if cut out of the past and mounted in the present. They exude an immediacy that contrasts with the blurred architecture—a painterly act that simultaneously recalls and relocates. Lehmbruck's “Große Sinnende” (Great Contemplator), however, seems to waft away metaphorically as it takes on the translucent hues of the walls and the scene's dampness.
Kneffel's scene invites us to look beyond the window into a world that once was. Through her art-historical examination of time and the boundaries between documentation and invention, she blends fact and fiction. The glass surface becomes a symbol of mediated perception—we see, but always through a stratum of distance. [KA]