Thoralf Knobloch: Hinterland

Thoralf Knobloch (b. Bautzen 1962; lives and works in Berlin) is among the renowned phalanx of EastGerman painters who have attracted a great deal of attention by bringing new figurative positions back to contemporary art. The artist trained at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where Eberhard Havekost, Frank Nitsche, and Thomas Scheibitz were his fellow students. Knobloch’s paintings show the mundane world; ostensibly trivial motifs he has observed in his immediate environment. His gaze is distant, impartial, though not without sympathy. His works seem strangely aloof, abstracted from the temporal world. By withdrawing the painted action from any sequence of events, isolating it from narrative contexts, he renders the beholder aware of the object he depicts, urging him to complete it by supplying his own recollections. The book is published in conjunction with the exhibition of Knobloch’s work at the Kunstmuseum Dieselkraftwerk, Cottbus (2012), and the Stadtische Galerie Dresden (2013). It offers a survey of the different periods of Knobloch’s oeuvre and presents new motifs from his most recent grand tour of America.