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 a 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 avant-garde 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 internationally. 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.
