Daniel Knorr

(Romanian, born 1968)

Daniel Knorr is a contemporary Romanian artist known for his projects that employ materials such as cocaine, casts of pot holes, and smoke, to trigger debates on political and theoretical content. Largely concerned with notions of emptiness, representation, and fantasy, Knorr’s texts, sculptures, graphic works, and performances take on his interests in a controversial manner. “Formally the work can be seen as a materialization of actual bio policy, driven by a contemporary collective consciousness of health care, which was established in the past decades,” he explained of his work Smoking in the Museum (2012). “The lifestyle that gets controlled by such an ideology is just one element in the sensitive ongoing discussion between smokers and non-smokers. It represents a field where the power of politics and state and is launched on a global scale, initiating a ‘synchronized’ cultural-political discussion.” Born in 1968 in Bucharest, Romania, he fled Romania to Germany at 14 years old with his parents. Knorr went on to study under Daniel Spoerri at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. The artist moved to Berlin in the 1990s and went on to represent Romania in the 2005 Venice Biennale with his work European Influenza. In 2017, his multifaceted Expiration Movement, debuted at documenta 14 in both Kassel and Athens. Knorr continues to live and work in Berlin, Germany. Today, his works are held in the collections of the Migros Museum in Zurich, the Stasi Museum in Leipzig, and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, among others.