Victor Knipping

Victor Knipping was born in 1996 in Aix-en-Provence. After training in art history, it is as a painter that he explores the material testimonies of silent minorities. Many of his works are the result of a four-handed game with strangers, illustrators, craftsmen or amateurs: in short, those who don’t sign. By appropriating elements of popular culture and know-how, the artist invests with equal passion the most refined works, with wax patterns acquired in Senegal recounting the struggle of local populations for women’s emancipation, or simple kitsch decorative objects like outdated and dusty canvas.

He experimented with different techniques. Paint projections are the basis of his practice, enabling him to materialize violence like a fluid projected violently onto a wall. Working flat, the paint freezes without being altered by the gravity of easel work. He also experiments with centralized spots and drips, reminiscent of blood as it flows and hits the ground, causing countless small drops around the central spot. His drips are the continuity of thought developed by the projections. Instead of crystallizing a precise moment, they materialize the passage of time and the slow evolution of our society, preferring to watch and let the paint run rather than wipe it off. He also opts for an ever more explicit form of dialogue with the public, physically punching through his canvases like the ultimate projection. His work has also focused on capturing paint splashes in embroideries on canvas, which are another way of bringing his paint explosions into play, like a photograph, which can also be seen as a tribute to the canvases of his early days. Since the beginning of 2023, Victor Knipping has also been exploring glitter paint projections, a way of magnifying his paintings, between beauty and violence, which he experiments with on canvases but also on Polaroids, as a final reference to his freeze-frame work.

His work has been shown at Art’Hotel Sobo Bade, Toubab Dialaw, Senegal in 2019 and at Château Henri Bonnaud in Aix-en-Provence in 2018, as well as at Galerie Daniel Hanemian in Paris in 2021 with the exhibition Violente Beauté. From June 17 to July 15, 2023, the Ars Longa gallery welcomed works by Victor Knipping for the exhibition Beauty, Order and Disorder.