Daniel Knorr
Family Jewels
26. März – 16. Mai 2010

Daniel Knorr presents the work "Family Jewels" at the Kunstverein Arnsberg: A cat is in the exhibition rooms during opening hours and wears family jewelry from one of the members of the Kunstverein's board. According to Knorr, the cat's waywardness and the tension associated with uncertainty that it radiates when handling and interacting with the family jewelry is synonymous with the Kunstverein's uncertainty about how an artist deals with its spaces.

"Family Jewels" colloquially means testicles. It refers to the function of male offspring in the context of reproduction and continuation of the family. Through this terminology, the meaning of male representation is socially anchored. The actual "family ornament" is a continuation of this idea, such as the common married name - traditionally the man's surname.

Knorr sees art as the highest form of representation of society. Exhibition venues are places that have been introduced by society in order to represent it. Similar to a family that experiences a further materialization of its family tree through a new member, each exhibition is a further step in the development of an exhibition practice and attitude that is supported by such an institution.

The relationship between artist and audience, the relationship between public and private, and the focus on the materialization of art are central aspects of Daniel Knorr's artistic practice. Characterized by modest means and deceptively simple forms or, on the contrary, exuberant as eye-catching large-scale interventions, his works address social processes and human behavior patterns by often disrupting the clearly defined public order. His projects to date include covering the heads of public sculptures and monuments in Copenhagen with black camouflage masks, the installation of a giant propeller on the roof of a former mill in Rotterdam or the execution of a child's drawing with cocaine that was confiscated by the police.

Daniel Knorr was born in Bucharest in 1968 and currently lives in Berlin. His last solo exhibitions were shown at the Kunsthalle Basel (2009) and the Kunsthalle Fridericianum Kassel (2008), his works were shown at the Venice Biennale (2005), the Berlin Biennale (2008) and Manifesta (2008).