Johannes Kahrs (b. 1965 in Bremen, lives and works in Berlin) presents his tenth solo exhibition at Zeno X Gallery. Kahrs’s paintings are always based on images that intrigue him: images from magazines, newspapers, films or his own photographic material. When he paints, Kahrs in a sense liberates the image from its original context or frame of reference. In the process, he problematizes the status and value of the image in contemporary visual culture.

In recent years, Kahrs has experimented much more with the materiality of paint. He still starts out from photographic reality but questions the narrative by approaching his source material in a new way. In doing so he combines work methods: body parts are enlarged, imaginary details are added, parts of the canvas are blurred, etc. He allows more imagination into his working process and makes the materiality of the paint part of the subject. The title of the exhibition refers to the first two sentences of Arthur Rimbaud’s ‘Le Bateau ivre’. The words describe an alienating feeling for Kahrs that reminds him of his work process: starting something without knowing where you will end up.

Artists: Johannes Kahrs