Karen Knorr

KAREN KNORR

INDIA SONG

September 10 – November 5, 2022

Danziger Gallery is pleased to present the photographs of Karen Knorr - a 21st century bestiary showcasing a selection of her constructed animal pictures taken in India between 2008 and 2022.  The exhibition opens on September 10th with a reception for the artist from 4 to 6pm and will be on view through November 5th at our gallery in Santa Monica’s Bergamot Art Center.  This will be our fourth presentation of Knorr’s work over the last 10 years and the first solo exhibition of her work in Los Angeles.

While Knorr’s images take some of their inspiration from the Indian tradition of personifying animals in literature and art, there is another almost subconscious strain to her work.  Going back to the time of cave painting we see that these early visual artists not only recorded their lives and surroundings, but used art to express themselves. The depiction of animals in symbolic and powerful ways and the urge to create these images with the best tools at hand is a line stretching from these unnamed cave painters to Karen Knorr. 

Playfully combining technologies and genres, Knorr mixes digital and analogue, architectural and nature photography.  Her photographs satisfy many of the requisites of traditional photography which address the surface appearance of a species or place, but then move to a paradoxical space where they begin to question the overt assumptions of the picture’s content. The boundaries of the real are thus challenged both by this hybrid process and also by the incongruity of the scenes.

If we define human experience by the culture we create, Knorr’s animals gift us with a unique expression of what it means to be human, and to see optimism and beauty in art.  Original and resonant the “India Song” pictures have received worldwide recognition.  Knorr’s work was given a solo exhibition at Tate Britain in 2015, and four of the India pictures were exhibited at The Getty Museum in 2019.