Karin Kneffel has been exploring the classic genre of fruit still lifes since the mid-1990s. She portrays the fruits, like the apples in the present picture, in multiple variations, always in extreme close-up and hyper-realistic perfection. Her fruit paintings, in which the oversized fruits are the protagonists, are famous for their perfect illusion. Despite the immediacy of the depiction, they still observe a mysterious distance. Karin Kneffel has taken the fruit still life to a new level, restoring its raison d'être in contemporary art.
In “Apples (Untitled F LXXIV)”, the apples free themselves from their still-life paralysis and form a moving landscape that tells of diversity and transience. Between perfectly shiny, red-cheeked apples, there are also some with flaws, small wormholes, and brown spots. This sea of apples rests on a soft, dark cushion that can be identified as dry leaves.
Even though this work does not put focus on hyper-realistic perfection, Karin Kneffel still employs an intricate technique. To achieve the impression of a perfect feel of various degrees of maturity, she works with the utmost precision. The canvas is primed and sanded several times so that the paint is absorbed just the way the artist needs it. The motif is roughly sketched out in pencil. Kneffel then uses very thin brushes, even for large paintings like this one, and painstakingly applies the paint in wafer-thin layers. This multi-layered paint structure leads to an impressive depth effect on the surfaces. All traces of the creative process have been erased from the perfectly even surface of the painting; not a trace of brushwork or impasto details remain.
With perfection of this kind, Karin Kneffel reveals the beauty of the fruit in harmony with the beauty of transience. The eye wanders over the infinite sea of apples of which no two are the same. The light atmosphere gives the surface an impression of drifting clouds resulting in an 'unreal reality' so typical of Karin Kneffel, and the reason why her paintings are so sought after. In doing so, she also tells of transience and ties in with the classic theme of the 'momento mori' in Baroque still life painting. Karin Kneffel questions and reinvents traditional pictorial themes.
“Verführung und Distanz” (Seduction and Distance) was the apt title of Kneffel's 2006 exhibition in Ulm and elsewhere, where our painting was also on display. Karin Kneffel herself says: “I try to keep the viewer at a distance, to direct their gaze and to set traps. I don't want them to lose themselves in my paintings, I want them to engage with them.” [EH]