Dirimart London opens its doors with A House in Hampstead, a new exhibition by German artist Karin Kneffel. Her third solo show, this project is not merely a pictorial narrative but a visual excavation of modernism’s architectural memory.
The exhibition centers on the Isokon Flats, a building commissioned in the 1930s by Jack and Molly Pritchard and designed by Wells Coates—one of the most prominent examples of Bauhaus influence in England. Once home to figures like Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, László Moholy-Nagy, Agatha Christie, Henry Moore, and Barbara Hepworth, this structure becomes a web of invisible connections in art history. Kneffel treats the building not as a backdrop but as a space of the mind.
Each window on her canvas is like an echo chamber stretching from past to present: unseen faces, faded memories, silent witnesses.
In her hyperrealist compositions, Kneffel deepens her exploration of reflection, illusion, and layered visuality. Her paintings remind us how constructed “reality” is. A reflection in a windowpane becomes as fragile as history itself. The still lifes in the exhibition continue another of Kneffel’s longstanding inquiries. Grapes and tulips, rendered larger than life, demonstrate that genres deemed “minor” can carry narratives as powerful as grand ones. This gesture also carries a feminist subtext that runs through Kneffel’s work: by centering genres marginalized by the academy, she subverts visual hierarchies.
Kneffel’s photographic works open a new perceptual space in the exhibition. Playing with the concept of reality, these pieces blur the boundaries between painting and photography while redefining the notion of the “gaze.” Past and present, analog and digital, memory and ghost—all coexist. A House in Hampstead questions not only a building but also a modernist ideal. Stories seeping through time become both vivid and elusive in Kneffel’s brushstrokes. The artist invites viewers to wander directionless in this ambiguity—to explore not just a house but the emotional topography of an era.
Dirimart London
On view until November 15, 2025
