Julian-Jakob Kneer is a Basel-born sculptor and installation artist who investigates the contingency of inherited sociocultural symbol and allocation systems. The examination of the subconscious and abnormal / pathological deviances from a bourgeois-normative perspective is central to his work. This includes obscure bodily practices, like paraphilia and fetish, as well as everyday and popular cultural artefacts and phenomena, commonly situated beyond conventional ideas of ‘good taste’. Ambivalence is an important keyword to his practice, as it forms irritating syntheses of high and subcultural references, tradition and presence, forming an unprejudiced juxtaposition of seemingly opposite aesthetics evoking coincidental feelings of desire and repulsion.

Kneer has participated in group exhibitions at Horse & Pony in Berlin, fffriedrich in Frankfurt am Main and the A night in Alexander show online, and solo and in collaboration at ROOM E-10 27 @ Center and Ushirode at Geddert Hronjec Collection in Berlin, BIKINI and 1.1, as well a web-residency at Oslo10 in Basel and Gärtnergasse in Vienna.

As of October 2019