A large vertical sheet of plywood covers two other plywood sheets of the exact same dimensions stacked closely behind it on the wall. The plywood pattern repeats itself across the width of the visible front panel, each repetition marking another layer within the actual depth of the timber log, revealed by the spiraling movement of the timber saw. Traces of the bright green monochrome paintings that line the inward-facing surfaces of each plywood board are visible at the edges. At the time the present work was made, Knoebel had been interested in the Suri colour scheme. Discussing the significance of colour in this scheme he has said, "They don't have orange or violet, but green. And they don't have brown, but wood." As the artist Daniel Lefcourt observes plywood retains its “thingness” in Knoebel’s Sandwich works, but in an uncanny reversal it is the thing itself which hides its illusion of representation. Lefcourt describes this as plywood’s psychedelic character, a characteristic borne out in its manufacturing process whereby a log is “peeled” rather than cut, creating a pattern that repeats the wood grain every three-hundred-and-sixty-degrees. The visible hanging mechanism reinforces the notion of stratification. Four exposed nails break through the surface of the picture penetrating all three panels at each corner. This not only establishes the objectness of the artwork but emphasises that the work is composed of separate hidden layers of veneer, not glued together, but simply hung on top of each other. As Carla Macchiavello has noted, the painting becomes the object and the object becomes both support and form.
Johannes Stuttgen suggests that the Sandwhich paintings have received comparatively scant scholarly attention. However the overriding principle of stratification and seriality in Sandwich 1992-07, relates it to the layering and stacking explored in Knoebel’s most well documented works, Raum 19 (Room 19) 1968 (Collection Dia Art Foundation) (fig.17) and the later, Genter Raum (Ghent Room) 1980 (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen since 2000) (fig.48). Both employ strategies of non-representation, reconfiguration, stacking and an interest in endlessness. As a student at the Düsseldorfer Kunstakademie, both Knoebel’s seminal works are informed by the way in which stacking and layering are employed in Joseph Beuys practice, particularly his ‘Fond’ works. But while Beuys works from metaphors and mythology, Knoebel’s Sandwhich paintings refer literally to themselves, through multiplication and inversion of the support structure. This self-referentiality allows Knoebel to avoid representation and excludes any allusion to transcendent meaning. This is in line with Malevich’s imagined paintings of the future – not copies of living objects from life, but living objects them selves: “A painted surface [as] a real and living form.”
The sandwich works parallel the development of this notion in the two room installations. Sandwich 1992-07 was executed the same year as the second iteration of Room 19 (Hessische Landesmuseum, Darmstadt). A drawing from Knoebel’s sketchbook dated 1992 clearly shows the intention to reverse the painting by concealing colour within the stacked layers of board resonating with the notion of storage and self-reflexivity in Room 19. The Henry Moore catalogue details that the Sandwich works first emerged around 1980 at the time Knoebel was working on Ghent Room and were first shown in Knoebel’s 1982 Eindhoven exhibition in which works such as De Chirico which sandwiches a large metal armature behind a freestanding sheet of plywood. The most recent sequence was executed in 2002 for Akira Ikeda Gallery, Berlin following the fabrication of Room 19 III in 2000.
Max Wechsler has acknowledged the significance of the disappearing of painting in the Sandwich works in terms of Knoebel turning painting in upon itself – an action fundamental to both Ghent Room and Room 19. Hubertus Gaßner, links this self-refelxivity in Knoebel’s Sandwhich paintings to Derrida’s poststructuralist critique of Levi Struass’ structurlaism in Ecriture et la Difference 1967. Derrida emphasizes, the hidden, blank spaces in the text. Wechsler considers the traces of colour that only become visible at the edges. The hermetic nature of the painting,” Wechsler suggests “awakens a deeply seated longing after the unseen image and thereby imparts a strong impulse of beholding,” a process summarized by Heidegger as “Conceal and Reveal” – the core of truth, beauty, and the work of art. In Knoebel's words, “Beauty always lies in between.”
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IMI KNOEBEL (b.1940) Sandwich 1992-07 Signed with artist’s initials and dated ‘92’ verso Acrylic on plywood 249.5 x 169.5 x 1.8 cm Executed in 1992 |
