Fruits of Labor
with Kenny Dunkan & Stefan Knauf
Curated by Simon Gérard
8 February — 30 March 2024
There is something unusual in both Kenny Dunkan and Stefan Knauf’s relationship with objects: their exhibited works mobilize such intricate production processes that they almost end up looking like riddles, hiding a sedimentation of meanings. You’re not only wondering what it is — you’re also asking how it was made, as if the nature and the origin of these objects were tightly intertwined. There’s a reason why: Dunkan and Knauf are blurring the lines between subject and object to provide an uncomamonly deep exploration of the nature of things.
Since the beginning of the industrial era, objects now appear in our lives to be consumed, without having a clue how they were made. Most objects of our contemporary life are uprooted from their origins, from back when they were just “fruits of labor”. We don’t know their history, nor their ontology. Through their work, Dunkan and Knauf both intend to value the rights of their objects to have a proper, meaningful, non-human life.
In Stefan Knauf’s Cactus series, the stereotypical image of a cactus is reproduced in metal and shown on a volcanic sand-covered floor. The cartoonesque aspect of the sculpture is not faked: steel was carefully inflated like a balloon and coated with zinc through a hot-dip galvanization technique. In Cactus, content and form seem to merge into an ecosystem of symbols, leading to the idea of an arid and isolated yet still-standing world.
In Kenny Dunkan’s Glaze series, close-up views of handmade Vallauris ceramic vases are processed through a UV printing machine on aluminum sheets. The result is neither a photograph nor a painting: the layers of polymerized ink turn the original images into hypertextured abstract topographies — as if these human-made vases contained the very origins of the earth and primordial life.
At the core of these reflections on the nature of things lies a meditation on nature itself. Lava, zinc, volcanic sand, resistant species of plants and insects… It is as if all these organic and mineral elements were reaching us through industrial processes. Nature, not as a fantasized and consensual construct, but as a grasp on what would survive us anyhow. A resilient, post-human nature, aware of itself, and connected with its surroundings.
Dunkan’s Kwi series, specifically produced for Fruits of Labor, could be considered a pun in final response to those intricate reflections. The artist took iconic design lamps from his personal collection and simply replaced some parts with calabashes, a type of dried fruit commonly used as recipients or decorations in Guadeloupe. These almost blasphemous compositions are quite moving: Dunkan dismantles the integrity of worshipped industrial objects to add some biographic, organic elements to them. There lies the idea of artistic production as, ultimately, a technique of the self, as defined by Michel Foucault: a technique “which permits individuals to effect […] a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.” 1
– Simon Gérard
1 Foucault, Michel. “Technologies of the Self.” Lectures at University of Vermont Oct. 1982, in Technologies of the Self, 16-49. University of Massachussetts Press, 1988
Cactus XIV (2023) by Stefan Knauf. Inflated steel, hot dip galvanized, 243 x 75 x 70 cm
Miss Lily (2023). Metal, PU Foam, acrylic resin, fiberglass, PETG, glass, pigments. Artwork by Anna Aagaard Jensen for 'Spring Fling' duo show at Saint Anne Gallery.
GLAZE #4 (ecumes), 2022 by Kenny Dunkan. Inks and varnish on Dibond, 84.1 × 59.4 cm