L. Parker Stephenson Photographs is pleased to announce its first exhibition of photographs by German artist Jens Knigge (b. 1964). Over the past nine years, Knigge has traveled to snow covered regions, exploring the landscape, our relationship to it, and the elements.  The resulting subtle, minimal yet highly detailed images, are presented as intimately scaled platinum prints.  Knigge’s Baikal – Sacred Sea series, made in Southern Siberia in 2020, is featured in the main gallery, while the second room presents a smaller selection of images from his earlier Northern Light project (2014-2016).  The scenes of the latter serve to situate the disorienting semi-abstractions in the first.  

Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest body of fresh-water, represents a precious biogeography. Eighty per cent of its thousands of species of plants, fish, and animals are endemic; existing naturally only in this area.  Knigge’s interest is in what can be observed in the top few feet of surface which, for close to five month a year, are frozen solid with ice.  Pictured in his mandalas are ripples, fractures and drifting air bubbles suspended in the clear transparent solid mass, as if preserved in amber.  What appear to be amoebae, galaxies, or hieroglyphs allude to views through a scientist’s microscope, an astronomer’s telescope, or an explorer’s binocular.  The viewer is transported to what the unaided eye, or mind, fails to see.  

Complementing this group is the Northern Light series whose vistas pan across the white winterscape. The macro views give context – site to the science.  Although remote, signs of human presence appear in these natural landscapes. Rockface, sea, and trees are countered by a dwelling silhouetted in a humid haze, a road interrupting the horizon, and a transmission structure elegantly tethered to its neighbor.

Images from these two series are reminders of our relationship with the natural world and its response to the human imprint.

Jens Knigge has had solo or two person exhibitions in Amsterdam, Berlin, Omaha, Paris, Prague, and New York and has also been shown in Austria, Japan, and the UK.  His platinum prints are in the collections of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Japan; and the New York Public Library among others.  His books Prima Materia (2020) and Contact - Northern Light (2016) are both available for purchase at the gallery.

For information on this exhibition please contact: parker@lparkerstephenson.nyc or call (212) 517-8700.

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