Where do memory, objective reality, and artistic imagination intersect? This question serves as the starting point for Karin Kneffel’s investigative series of works on Haus Lange, the residence designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) that once held the important collection of textile manufacturer Hermann Lange (1874–1942). The collection included key works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso, August Macke, and others, which once imbued the austere spaces of Modernism with their vibrant energy. Drawing on a handful of black-and-white photographs from the 1930s, Kneffel breathes new life into the interiors and reactivates a place that history has silenced. The historic photographs offer insight into the building's architectural layout and the iconic works of a collection compiled in the 1920s, most of which are now scattered across major museums and private collections worldwide. In a procedure that is almost archaeological in nature, the artist identifies and selects individual works to trace their former locations. She travels to the works' current museum locations to study the originals. These include three works from the current collection of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin: Kirchner’s oil painting “Potsdamer Platz” (1914), his alder wood sculpture “Stehende, die Hände vor dem Schoß” (Standing Woman, Hands in Lap, 1912), and Max Beckmann’s “Familienbild George” (“Family Portrait of George”) (1935). In the large-format painting presented here, Kneffel reunites these three major works in a meticulously reconstructed interior and transforms documentary material into a complex pictorial reflection.

A Veil Between Times
On this imaginary journey through time, the works no longer appear in their historical context at Haus Lange, but in contemporary, brightly colored exhibition spaces viewed through a veiled perception—the illusion of a fogged-up glass pane that lies over the composition like a membrane. Using a masterful trompe-l’œil technique, Kneffel makes reflections shimmer, light refract, and contours dissolve. The translucent barrier becomes a metaphor for memory itself, simultaneously concealing and revealing. In “Untitled,” the artist accomplishes a pictorial translation between the actual artworks she visited in person and the historical memory of the private interior that once surrounded them. Through subtle shifts in perspective and presentation, as well as delicate modulations of spatial references, a work of art emerges that is neither a pure reconstruction nor a free invention, but rather a dynamic synthesis of both levels. [KA]