Universal Heritage by Christoph Knecht

Unit 7 exhibitions, Hong Kong
February to April 2018

‘The law of world citizenship is to be united to the conditions of universal hospitality” – Immanuel Kant, Toward Perpetual Peace.

Ever since the abandonment of the Myth of the Flat Earth and the acceptance of the idea of a spherical world, human beings have been able to lay claim to a common possession of the surface of the planet. One of the undeniable conditions of inhabiting a finite sphere is that expansion can never be limitless, people cannot simply spread out for ever and the consequence of our urge to roam is that we must, in time, tolerate one another’s presence. In his essay Toward Perpetual Peace, Immanuel Kant suggested that this expansion with regard to "use of the right to the earth's surface which belongs to the human race in common" would "finally bring the human race ever closer to a cosmopolitan constitution". So much so, that the idea of a common heritage has since precipitated international law insisting that natural and cultural heritage be held in trust for future generations and be protected from exploitation by nation states or corporations.

Conflict notwithstanding; the idea of that the universal is natural law, posits the origins of mankind as a ‘community of all men, divided by seas and deserts – uninhabitable parts of the earth – but with ships and camels (ships of the desert) enabling people to approach each other across ungoverned land, using mankind’s right to the common face of the earth to create a possibility of interaction’. In this universal state of shared occupancy, movement becomes the status quo. We eventually encounter each other and ourselves time and again as we increasingly roam throughout this shared, finite space. In this, the universal state of shared occupancy, migration is the status quo and boundaries become fluid. Where two ungoverned bodies of water meet, there is no beginning and there is no end, there are no borders and there are no rules.

In terms of visual culture, as an inherited form of expression through the use of imagery, the universal means that everything is game and artists have always taken inspiration from experiences that fall outside their own normative traditions. In this sense, we are products of our own (visual) culture rather than producers of it. Visual culture, like the area in which two ungoverned bodies of water meet, remains fluid and ever changing. Predicated on shared exchange and never static, it is the job of the artists to reflect this very same moment of art’s making.

Christoph Knecht represents the latest in a broader history of artists to be influenced by East Asian visual culture. Having spent time in China practicing oil, as well as more traditional methods of Chinese ink painting, he produced his first works there in 2001. After a return visit to study abroad in 2009, and becoming disillusioned with the heavily figurative, Russian style of art making and teaching that he encountered, Knecht retreated to the countryside of Sichuan to learn Mandarin and study more about Daoism. It is here, particularly with the series Plant of Opportunities – a recurring motif for Knecht, that we first start to see the influence of another, inherited visual culture influence and inform his works. A reverence for nature and our unequivocal place within it, as opposed to above it, is immediately apparent in works on canvas such as

Untitled, 2015 and Untitled 2017 where fluid, natural forms recall botanical diagrams enmeshed with corporeal forms – man and nature literally becoming one, in an entangled state of being. But there’s ambivalence here too, a denial of hierarchy that sees mundane materials sit side by side with ‘fine art’ sentiment.

Daoism promoted the idea of harmony with nature, with the title of the first chapter of the Zhuangzi being translated as “Free and Easy Wandering” and “Going Rambling Without a Destination.” Both of these suppositions reflect the sense of a figure who is in spontaneous accord with the natural world, and who has retreated from the anxieties of modern life, in order to live a healthy, peaceful and natural life outside of the city. In this utilitarian approach to making, Knecht brings art back into the realm of the everyday. It occupies a place in the world much as we do in nature, inseparable from and yet integral to it, at once a part of the whole and yet the whole universe in itself. In a fluid and ever-changing world without borders, it becomes everything and nothing.

Christoph Knecht was born in Karlsruhe in 1983 and currently lives and works in Düsseldorf.