Projektion

At the beginning of his career, Imi Knoebel experimented with light using slide projectors. He projected abstract light forms such as lines, crosses and rectangles both on interior and exterior surfaces, using the walls of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as well as house walls, trees or lampposts in and around the city. Knoebel then photographed the light projections and reproduced them as black and white prints. The artist was one of the first to use photography as an independent art medium in the Düsseldorf of the 1960s. In these works, photography is not being used to depict objects, but as a way to produce abstract image composition. With his projections, Knoebel aims to dematerialize the art process by working with pure, immaterial figures of light. Here, the influence of Kazimir Malevich’s (1879–1935) Russian Suprematism on the young artist is palpable.