Michael Kindred Knight

Michael Kindred Knight continues to utilize and cultivate a roster of plank-like forms, his abstractions appearing simultaneously tectonic and connected to observation, particularly observation of natural light and its inherent ability to generate color and visual phenomena. Hard and soft edged lines, panels, and planks of varying weight and density are at once structure, gesture and depictions of atmosphere.

In Rayleigh, Knight’s practice is coupled with a straightening out of the compositions and increased scale; the paintings are more assured in their articulation and increasingly succinct in their generation of distinct atmospheres. Knight subtly employs luminous layers of white and grey tones butting up against more substantive hues that frame and situate the picture plane.

The direct mark making, albeit nuanced, reveals how the painting is made layer by layer, the corners and edges functioning as indexes. Each decision is informed by the accumulation of the previous. The paintings, with the process visible and with the interplay between representation and abstraction, acknowledge the slipperiness of paint as a material, both physically and interpretively.

Michael Kindred Knight was born in Portland, Oregon, and received an MFA from Claremont Graduate University (2010) and BA from Western Washington University (2004). He lives and works in Los Angeles. Knight is the recipient of the Karl and Beverly Benjamin Fellowship in Art, and the Walker/Parker Memorial Fellowship, and the Claremont Graduate University's President's Art Award. His work has received critical reviews and been featured in The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, New American Paintings, The Huffington Post, Glasstire, and ArtScene, among other publications.

Rayleigh

May 17 - June 28, 2014

Press Release