Stéphane Kropf

Marc Jancou is pleased to announce Stéphane Kropf: The Art of Looking Sideways, the Swiss artist's first solo exhibition in the United States.

Stéphane Kropf is known for his large-format, abstract canvases that investigate the pure sensuality of painting. His newest works will be a continuation of his “Situated Knowledge” series. In this body of work, Kropf employs interference paint, which is capable of reflecting both an individual color and its complementary hue, depending on the setting and the spectator’s position. This highly technical pigment has no inherent color of its own, and as Kropf notes, looking at one of his paintings from the side “is almost like seeing an unprimed canvas.” The assertion that a work of art is defined by its context and the perspective of its viewer—a legacy of conceptual art—is integral to Kropf’s work; it also addresses the cultural practices surrounding how a painting is produced, exhibited, and photographed. Kropf’s work stubbornly resists photography: it is nearly impossible to communicate its appearance on film.

The series title “Situated Knowledge” is derived from an essay by the American feminist scientist Donna Haraway, who tries to define a specifically feminist scientific perspective, and notes that the human brain privileges sight above all other senses, lending a sense of validation to any facts that can be perceived by sight. However, the appearance and meaning of Kropf’s paintings is entirely dependent on factors outside of his control: conditions of ambient light, time of day, and the viewer’s movement and “situated” point of view. This deliberate openness to chance and context is in the spirit of minimalist works like Robert Morris’s Mirror Cubes. Yet despite his many references to the history of art, Kropf also spreads his paint “like pastry” with an unassuming delight in the richness of his material. He emphasizes the pliable nature of the paint, spreading it across the canvas in a thick impasto of dynamic, ethereal scrolls. With their large scale, visual transformations, and conceptual foundation, Kropf’s paintings engage and challenge the viewer intellectually, physically and optically.

Born in 1979 in Lausanne, Switzerland, Stéphane Kropf studied at the Ecole Cantonal d'Art de Lausanne, where he is currently Head of the Department of Visual Arts. His work has been exhibited at Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva; Galerie Am Lindenplatz, Vaduz; The Bathroom, Lyon; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and the Fondation d'Entreprise Ricard, Paris. Upcoming solo exhibitions includeDouble Crème, Château de Gruyères, in September, 2014; and a yet-to-be-titled exhibition at Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Zurich, in December 2014.