My interest in making art is to produce a sense of doubt, something I have not yet really grasped.
—Karin Kneffel
Karin Kneffel’s lush, eloquent oil paintings are perfectly constructed impossibilities that collapse heterogeneous places and incidents. Whether inspired by personal memories or art historical sources, her precisely rendered still lifes and interior scenes deftly exploit the medium’s representational potential while underscoring its inherently fictive nature. By layering and recombining events, places, and things to imagine mysterious multidimensional spaces, Kneffel casts the viewer as a voyeur in a sustained reflection on the complex relationships between image, space, and time.
Kneffel was born in 1957 in Marl, Germany. From 1981 to 1987, she studied at the University of Münster, Germany, and Comprehensive University of Duisburg, Germany. From 1981 to 1987, she studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany, with Johannes Brus, Norbert Tadeusz, and Gerhard Richter, with Richter taking her on as a master student. She was a visiting professor at Hochschule für Künste Bremen, Germany, in 1998, and at the Iceland University of the Arts, Reykjavik, in 2000. From 2000 to 2008, Kneffel was a professor at the University of the Arts, Bremen, and in 2008, she was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. She currently lives and works in Düsseldorf and Munich.