“The show is based on a very simple idea, that of ‘furniture’. But there won’t really be any recognizable furniture objects in the show. Rather, it is a show about the definition of furniture not being a literal object but more of a political and philosophical concept. Furniture does not mean ‘chair’ so much as it means a state of mind about being structural, supportive, in the background, important but almost anonymous. The works in the show will break into two groups: clotheslines and stretchers. The clotheslines are like drawings in space, geometric arrangements with colored shapes hanging from them. The stretchers in Möbel for Knoebel are straightforward painting stretchers – rectangles of various sizes with cross-bracing and beveled edges for stretching canvas – except that they are made out of very fine wood and are crafted to such a degree as to be objects in themselves. Further, they have feet and legs, so that they sit on the wall like ‘furniture’ rather than like paintings.

I really like the idea of paintings as furniture, the idea of a painting being in a room just like a chair, it’s on the wall but it has a wooden support and a fabric cover. Only I’ve separated them to make each one a thing of its own. Each part reveals its full character by being separated from the other. I like that the English word mobile and the German Möbel come from the Latin mobilis, or movable. If you make paintings as furniture, it makes a very direct historical reference to the development of images as portable objects, i.e. stretched canvases rather than icons or frescos. So, in the history of painting, this show will make oblique reference to that moment in art history when mobile, Möbel and mobilis were all definitions of not only what a painting was, but what it could do. This still is how we understand paintings today. That’s why the show is titled Möbel, to point to this many-layered aspect of an object that is made, looked at, moved, and used.” (Joe Scanlan, August 2011)

Joe Scanlan, geboren 1961 in Circleville, lebt in Brooklyn (USA). Scanlan setzt sich in seinen Werken mit ökonomischen Konzepten und Abläufen auseinander. In oftmals spielerischer Form thematisiert er die Errungenschaften und Verwerfungen der Moderne, stellt industrielle Fertigung und traditionelles Handwerk nebeneinander und bedient sich zur Präzisierung seiner künstlerischen Strategien aus dem Vorrat wirtschaftlichen Handelns. Scanlan ist seit 2009 Direktor und Professor of Visual Arts am Lewis Center for the Arts an der Princeton University. 2001 bis 2009 hatte er eine Professur an der Yale University School of Art inne. Für weitere Informationen zum Künstler siehe auch www.thingsthatfall.com .