At the beginning of February, the artist Karen Kunkel arranged printed and painted foils in the CUBIC, which as a whole offers insight into her work as a spatial installation. The presentation will be on display until the end of March and will end with the happening ‘Spurensuche’, in which Karen Kunkel performs with Peter Tucholski in the duo Kapella, on 29 March at 3 pm.
The following text by Volker Pesch provides further information about Karen Kunkel’s work and oeuvre:

Experimental

What is visible at first glance – and what is hidden? Karen Kunkel’s spatial installation play with light and layers of transparent foils, printed or painted, translucent and fragile. Seemingly organic structures from an experimental working process are reminiscent of underwater landscapes or cells under a microscope. This invites us to perceive how different light situations – during the course of day light and later at night with electric light – affect our perception. This creates unexpected perspectives, insights and vistas.

Karen Kunkel likes to work in a process-orientated way, with the aim of exploring states, structures and processes. These can be internal or external, with the artist moving back and forth between the poles of rationality and purposeful, conscious exploration on the one hand and irrationality, emotion, intuition and chance on the other. She uses a variety of artistic means, including her own body. Both rational influences and logical decisions, as well as an emotional approach and surreal ideas, can lead to figurative or abstract works. The artist explores nature, makes plant studies and experiments with pigments, inspects plants, algae and fungi under the microscope. In her prints, drawings and paintings, she often combines techniques and uses unusual painting surfaces such as washing gloves, file covers or – as in the ‘Experimental’ installation – lamination pouches.

Text: Volker Pesch
Photos: Karen Kunkel, Marcus Schramm