Genesee, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
18 x 18 in.
Pima, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
18 x 18 in.
Virden, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
18 x 18 in.
Northtown, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
18 x 18 in.
Vantage, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
18 x 18 in.
Outrun, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
18 x 18 in.
Meridian, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
18 x 18 in.
Duncan, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
18 x 18 in.
Ballard, 2022
Acrylic on canvas
18 x 18 in.
Michael Kindred Knight’s newest body of work represents a progression in his approach to abstraction. Urged on by curiosity, Knight’s abstractions are complex pictorial events that are developed over time.
He often refers to the works as “places,” partially attributed to Knight’s fondness for the flourishes, fixtures, facades, and sunset-bathed stucco that constitute LA architecture. While fictional in nature, these “places” are brimming with a sense of gravity, structure, improbable horizons and time-of-day.
The titles are autobiographical, expanding on the adage, “What’s in a name?” The paintings are often named after places, cities, neighborhoods, and streets, evocative of certain moments and periods in Knight’s life. In effect, the paintings describe a feeling of dislocation – of being caught in the detached realities of the Information Age and the tactile, sensory experiences of embodiment: skin, eyes, memory, breath – all with a mind to appreciate being present in the here, now.
While historical modes of abstraction and landscape painting are blithely indulged and interrogated, this series features a new repertoire of forms and gestures that prompt a rhetorical exchange from one work to the next. The artist’s hand is apparent in the searching and demarcating gestures within the work. This sets up a dialogical construct between the marks and their forms that is as much about the volume of the empty space as the structural forms that define it. Dense and varied compositions, the small-scale encourages an intimate read from the viewer, a closer inquiry into the environment it proposes.
---Excerpted from gallery press release...
