My art practice spans across fashion, performance and installation fusing movement, pattern and conceptual investigation. Utilizing dimensional pattern-cutting and sartorial arts, I create translucent tinted stitched membranes that suspend in space, or rest or stretch on a form. These membranes capture movement and motion in space, illuminate dualities: of the viewer and wearer, inner and outer, and latent and manifest energy, and become filters of perception.
Katrin Schnabl is an spatial-visual artist, designer, and educator. Trained as a dancer, Schnabl moved to New York from her native Germany, where she combined her passions creating costumes for avantgarde dance. This initiated a shift towards fashion; and after graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology, Schnabl launched her collection, which was presented at NYFW and sold inter/-nationally. She followed an invitation to teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is a professor. Schnabl continually explores where sophisticated garments that move sensuously with the body meet dynamic spatial and dimensional sculpture. Through 3-D kinetic portal paintings and scrolls, Schnabl captures movement and motion in space through ‘membranes’ that illuminate dualities: of the viewer and wearer, inner and outer, and latent and manifest energy.