Bühnebilder

Bühnenbilder, the title of Silke Otto-Knapp' recent exhibition in Minneapolis, are the fabricated views resulting from dressing sets. Neutral until they are costumed, they are like blank volumes awaiting a set designer's meticulous treatment. The only colours in these works are black, grey, silver, and white. The artist's palette and methodology, in which she applies a dark watercolour wash and then subtracts from it using absorptive implements, raising images from the dark, reflects the photograph's urge to resurface something whose very location - in history, memory, desire - eludes the grasp of any image.