Very happy to welcome artists Heinz Peter Knes and Bojan Šarčević for the release of Knes’ new book, Correspondences, published by Is-Land ❊

Heinz Peter Knes has developed a photographic-documentary practice that considers the uneasy play of image, photographer and society. A choreographer of contexts, the artist’s work is characterized by deep research into family systems and cultural infrastructures which he looks at through his restless queer lens. Knes’ mercurial and thoughtful photographic oeuvre results from a dialogue with himself and a genealogy of influences/provocateurs that extends from Josef Winkler to Hervé Guibert, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Moyra Davey, Julie Ault, Jean-Luc Moulène, Danh Vo, Antonin Artaud and others. In Correspondences it becomes obvious that the artist’s quietly evolving personal world plays as crucial a role in the formation of his photographic identity as the myriad makers listed above. For Knes, the camera becomes a conduit through which to make sense of a world filtered through his back and forth with these conscious and unconscious collaborators.

With eight chapters of meditations and conversations, Correspondences is Heinz Peter Knes’ only discursive intervention into photography. Like his persistently circulating and gently objective pictures, the book ekes out a language of the image. The photograph as echo of sensitive experience: a way to dematerialize our perceptions, but also to gather them.

Pre-order the book here.

Heinz Peter Knes (b. 1969) lives and works in Berlin. A graduate of Fachhochschule Dortmund (1999), Knes was first recognized through a series of photographs about rural-German adolescence titled E.M.T. in MSP that circulated widely in fashion magazines in the early 2000s. (This project was recently published in full by Edition Taube.) Knes moved to Berlin (2001), where he built a reputation within fashion and contemporary art contexts. He achieved recognition internationally as a BUTT Magazine photographer and subject. Today, Heinz Peter Knes makes projects that are entirely shaped by his individual evolution as an artist, such as Gesture Studies exhibited at Duane Thomas Gallery, New York (2021). Both human typology and a meditation on difference, the work recently entered the collection of Berlinische Galerie. Knes is also noted for a variety of collaborative projects working with various archives. For instance, Hannah Arendt’s Library (with Danh Vo and Amy Zion); I·M·U U·R·2 (with Danh Vo, Julie Ault, and featuring the collections of Martin Wong and Florence Wong Fie); and Der weltrevolutionäre Prozess seit Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels bis in die Gegenwart (with Dominikus Müller). Knes has been featured in numerous publications internationally and in 1998 co-founded the photo fanzine Strahlung. The artist’s latest exhibition, very near sighted but unspectacled, is on view at Duane Thomas Gallery, New York from 14th of October on.

Bojan Šarčević (b. 1974) lives and works in Basel, Switzerland and Paris, France. The plurality of Bojan Šarčević’s practice finds its roots in an essential relationship to sculpture, materiality, and space, questioning their political, social, and poetic implications. The artist explores the ideological resonances and cultural displacements carried by forms, materials, and structures. Bojan Šarčević was featured in solo exhibitions at IAC– l’Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne (France), Kunstmuseum Vaduz (Liechtenstein); Tate St.Ives (United Kingdom), Kunsthalle Bergen (Norway); Kunstverein Hamburg (Germany); MAMBO, Bologna (Italy); Credac, Ivry-sur-Seine (France); Le Grand Café Centre d’art contemporain, Saint-Nazaire (France); Kunstverein München (Germany), and large scale group exhibitions such as 3rd Berlin biennale, 50th Venice biennale and Manifesta 2. He teaches at Beaux-Arts in Paris and DeAteliers in Amsterdam.