Screen (Trees and Moon)

Silke Otto-Knapp explores the formal and material possibilities of painting as a medium and a representational space. By constructing compositions that highlight the flatness of the object, she heightens the sense of illusion both within the pictorial plane and in relation to the space in which the works are shown. Otto-Knapp made Screen (Trees and Moon)—the artist’s first ever stand-alone painting—for her 2020 solo exhibition In the Waiting Room at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. The work is emblematic of the artist’s painstaking process of adding and removing watercolor pigment to create luminous, nearly translucent washes of paint. The black and gray angular botanical motifs evoke a Cubist aesthetic and pay homage to artist and Ballets Russes set designer Natalia Goncharova.