The Odunpazarı Modern Museum (OMM) in Eskişehir is hosting Calligraphic Wig, an extraordinary installation by Romanian artist Daniel Knorr, on view until March 22. Living and working in Berlin, Knorr uses plastic materials to explore the intersections of reality, representation, and fantasy, inviting viewers to discover a new visual and conceptual language.
Calligraphic Wig follows the production and recycling processes of plastic, reflecting Knorr’s time spent in plastic transformation factories in Hong Kong. The artist collects unpredictable plastic forms that emerge during mechanical malfunctions and reinterprets them through his own artistic vocabulary. These spontaneous shapes resemble letters from an unknown alphabet, deep-sea organisms, or organic structures from other planets, engaging viewers in a dialogue between material and imagination.
Photo: Mert Derneklioglu.
First exhibited in Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong’s famously multicultural building that houses residents from over 90 nationalities, Calligraphic Wig also highlights the socio-cultural context from which it evolved. Some of the plastic fragments are coated in automotive paint colors used since the 1970s, linking the work to commercial aesthetics, while others are left raw and unprocessed, emphasizing the material’s primal energy and transformative potential.
The installation offers not only a visual spectacle but also a reflection on environmental and cultural consciousness. By merging waste with beauty, and industrial production with artistic expression, Knorr proposes an alternative mode of communication—a language born from surplus material and spontaneous creation.
Photo: Mert Derneklioglu.
About Daniel Knorr
Born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1968, Daniel Knorr emigrated with his family to Germany at the age of 14. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Daniel Spoerri and moved to Berlin in the 1990s. Knorr represented Romania at the 2005 Venice Biennale with his work European Influenza, and later presented his multi-layered project Expiration Movement at documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens in 2017.
His works are part of prominent collections such as the Migros Museum in Zurich, the Stasi Museum in Leipzig, and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. Daniel Knorr currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
In addition, OMM continues to host the exhibition Ehlikeyif, curated by İdil Tabanca, which brings together painting, sculpture, installation, and furniture design, and will remain open until November 16.
