For the inaugural show in the new space at Mercator Höfe on Potsdamer Straße inBerlin, Galerie Thomas Schulte presents a solo exhibition of recent paintings anddrawings by Cosima zu Knyphausen. Through varied techniques, formats andmaterials, zu Knyphausen draws on sources from the art historical, literary andpop cultural to the everyday, personal and self-referential. The works broughttogether here under the title ofMaestratrace fragmentary paths to learningand discovery across different realms of education and desire. What opens upis a layered reflection: on historical representations of women, as artists and inart; and the vocation of artist, its current models and canons, through the lensof her own artistic training and practice.Whether contoured in loosely sketched, yet bold lines or taking shape throughblurred atmospheres of vibrant colors in diffuse strokes, zu Knyphausen’s worksinvite us to draw close, as though peering into a book. In scenes frequentlyset in interiors, this impression is amplified by depictions and enactments ofcontemplation, analysis, reading, interpretation, and reinterpretation.A drawing offering a prelude, an invitation to the exhibition—which fittinglytakes place down the street from the former site of a historic painting school forfemale artists1—depicts the allegorical ‘Elements of Art’: Design, Composition,Coloring, and Invention. Here, zu Knyphausen looks to the motif realized inthe room-framing ceiling paintings of Angelika Kauffmann from 1778-80,which notably featured female figures in all four images. As representations ofintellectual and creative activity considered fundamental to art, they also reflectthe disciplinary pillars through which systems of organizing and categorizinghave been upheld. This referential quality, evident not only in the quoting ofanother artist, but also in the portrayal of the artistic process itself, is a threadthat runs through. Titles of works likeIbídem(2023) andLa Source(2024)—both of which show women in intimate pairings or groups as they pore over booksor images together—even call on systems of citation embedded in the materialof study. These, in turn, point to a certain place: to a beginning.Among recurrent subjects like the artist’s studio or the revisiting of worksby historical figures like Artemisia Gentileschi, there are allusions to zuKnyphausen’s own education—a kind of beginning: from attending an all-girlsCatholic school to studying painting at art school. The latter at times appears inlighthearted, discrete references to the scathing mark left by an authoritarianprofessor. The figure of the professor is present and repeated in different works.InBoden der HGB (dreckig)(2022/23), for example, she stands at the end of acorridor facing a window, almost a shadow. What gives definition to the scene,however, is the black-and-white tiling of the art school’s floor. A moment framedby place, the pattern is not only reproduced in the small image at the center of thecanvas, but is also blown up around it, extending to its edges. It could continueon, or perhaps open up to reveal something else entirely.

Such works—in which an image substantially smaller than the canvas isframed by, or layered with, an abstract pattern—often recall medieval miniaturesand motifs. While the image fills more of the surface in other paintings, it is attimes also vividly outlined, or contained within a rough oval, like a thought bubbleillustrating a daydream. And still others comprise multiple scenes placed sideby side, or stacked on top of one another, similar to a comic strip. Throughout,presented as vignettes, their pictorial framing is clear.Further themes related to role models, complicity, and lesbian desire cropup. From snippets of a music video by t.A.T.u (“All The Things She Said” from2002), framed by the motif of a chain-link fence; to a playful inversion ofDeathand the Maiden(2024), in which a naked figure stands confidently before a bed,presenting herself to the reclining skeleton of a lover; or a hazy scene in theinterior of Möbel Olfe, a beloved queer bar in Berlin. Individual moments big andsmall, profound and mundane, fictional and real, across time and space, hereoccupy the same plane.This fragmentary, patchwork approach is also reflected in zu Knyphausen’suse of materials that have been left over or produced through her time and workin the studio. These include more explicit references to painting production,such as strips of canvas and used staples, as well as more metaphorical ones, likeegg shells.How difficult can it be(2024), for example, comprises a spatteringof loosened staples on a dark teal background with a rugged piece of canvasapplied to the center. In it, a small image in succinct black outlines shows anartist engaged in building a stretcher frame. While the egg shells similarly lendthemselves to textured surfaces, they are also used for more elaborate, irregularpatterns of tiling, like mosaics. InEgg Mosaic VI(2024), the broken shells areassembled, from randomness, into a specific grid: a chessboard. Left open andblank, it holds the potential for actions both planned and unpredictable. It offersa framework: for the configuration of different parts, rules, roles, strategies, andrelations; for a kind of world-building.In Maestra, we are invited to contemplate our notions of trajectories to befollowed, sets of rules to be mastered, and what is taught, learned, and oftenleft out of such structures. More than an attempt to accumulate knowledge,achievements, or recognition; through continuous repetitions, reworkings andreimaginings, it is the desire to understand, (un)learn, create and transform,that is conveyed. A desire to seek out new narratives and representationalpossibilities, to pick up the pieces and build the frame anew.

Text by Julianne Cordray

Cosima zu Knyphausen (born 1988) is a Chilean artist based in Berlin. Shestudied at Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig from 2009 to2017 and was a participant of BPA Berlin Program for Artists in 2018. Acatalogue with her graduation work was published in 2017 as a collaborationbetween Hamburger Bahnhof and 50Hertz. During the outbreak of theCovid pandemic, she was an artist in residency at Fundación Casa Wabi,Puerto Escondido, Mexico, in 2020. Cosima zu Knyphausen has been aguest lecturer at HfK Bremen (2023) and guest mentor at BPA (2021).Recent solo exhibitions include Sebastian Gladstone (2024), Museo de ArteContemporáneo, Santiago de Chile (2022), Weiss Falk, Basel (2022), pilotopardo, London (2021), and stadium, Berlin (2020). Furthermore, she hasparticipated in group exhibitions at Galerie Wedding, Berlin (2019), Vereinfür zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2021), Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam(2022), Berghain, Berlin (2020), Briefing Room, Brussels (2023), and XYZcollective, Tokyo (2023). Her monographCentowas published with Bom DiaBoa Tarde Boa Noite in Berlin in 2023