I don’t know much about Imi Knoebel’s Sternenhimmel photos, except they look awesome. And by awesome, I mean, like the gridded slice of sky seen captured by the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey photos I installed at apexart a couple of years ago.
Sternenhimmel is actually Sternenhimmel – für Lola, a portfolio of 54 prints, each 40x30cm, that Knoebel apparently shot in 1970, but only produced as an edition in 2006. He has a granddaughter named Lola who looks to be about that age, so maybe that’s why.
This is ed. 1/7, plus 2APs, and this is the second time it’s come up for sale at Christie’s. I’d like to think his 8yo granddaughter is not hard up for the £12-18,000 they didn’t sell for in 2014 or the £7-10,000 they’re estimated at now. But maybe she got an AP.
Not much is online about Sternenhimmel, except Joerg Heiser’s discussion of seriality and Knoebel’s 1975 Kunsthalle Düsseldorf exhibition:
The conceptual focus of the pictures of stars, which were brought together into one large picture in the exhibition, is that one star was added to each photo, but this information is not supplied in the catalog. The star motif makes the refusal to communicate sexy; it does not reflect obtuse mental sloth, but is mysteriously seductive due to the cosmic, unending series of stars. It is minimal techno, so to speak, long before it existed, digital in the analog age. Black and white as 0 and 1.
Imi Knoebel, Projections, 1974, 28 photos, ed. 2/9, image: christies
Knoebel was making a series of 250,000 line drawings (Linienbilder) and photos documenting the flashing patterns of lights in a closed room (Innenprojektionen, above), so maybe taking a picture of every star was just one more grand project doomed to futility. (Not to get too On Kawara about it, but if he kept it up, he probably could’ve finished the drawings by now. 250,000 drawings in 50 years is only like a dozen a day.)
14 Apr 2016, lot 168, Imi Knoebel, Sternenhimmel – für Lola, 1970/2006, est. £7-10,000 [christies]
Seriality and Color in Knoebel’s Work [db-artmag.de]