Gerhardt Knodel’s “Imagined Futures”
Wasserman Projects
Feb. 1, 2025
A lot of art openings promise an “immersive and magical world” built by the artist.
Gerhardt Knodel’s “Imagined Futures” doesn’t disappoint on that description.
The longtime fiber educator at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Knodel is part of an artist pipeline that has brought many great talents to Detroit through Cranbrook’s vast rolodex.
Inside the sleek galleries of Wasserman Projects in Detroit’s historic Eastern Market, Knodel’s textile characters absolutely sing against exposed brick and dim lighting.
There are expensive silks against cheaper fabrics, giving a wonderful sense of texture and balance to each piece. No, it’s the expensive stuff that makes the cheap stuff pop. Or maybe we’d be completely bored by the show if there weren’t some rough edges?
Who cares. Knodel is having an absolute blast with this latest collection of work, and we’re having a blast taking in all the color and texture! If you look closely, everything has a face. Everything seems to be alive. I've never wanted to reach out and touch art more in my life .(SPOILER ALERT: I did not, I promise.)
In some ways, it felt like a retrospective, with a wall of colorful drawings next to fully fleshed out tree-like sculptures and layered compositions creating a circle in the middle of the show. But everything here is made just in the past few years -- a snapshot of what’s on Knodel’s mind today, not yesterday.
It’s paired wonderfully with a smaller show from Roberto Benavidez and a collection of pieces from his excellent “Abstract Piñata” series.
These are not the ones you can buy at a grocery store. These are sleek, layered works that turn piñatas into centerpieces for your mid-century living room. You won’t be smashing these pieces with a baseball bat anytime soon.
