Imi Knoebel Elemente E.1, 2017

Imi Knoebel’s resolutely abstract art investigates the fundamentals of painting and sculpture. He has developed an experimental approach and serial way of working, characterised by a haptic use of colour, geometric vocabulary of forms and material simplicity. In Elemente E.1 (2017), he takes the idea of reduction a step further by diminishing the scale of the three units, which are grouped together and displayed as a frieze. Within this trio, he has carefully calibrated the interplay between organic and geometric forms, curves and corners, shapes and spaces, yellow and neutrals, dark and light. 

Since the 1990s, he has increasingly used shaped aluminium as the ground for his paintings, creating geometric colour fields that are defined by the relationship between the pigments and their boundaries. This use of a shaped ground is visually reminiscent of Minimalist works by American artists such as Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly. In his Elements series, Knoebel uses the possibilities offered by reduction and abstraction to explore the emotional and intellectual power of geometry. The trio of forms becomes an object of purely aesthetic experience and perception, with the aim of reinvigorating the basic material elements of art.