Narcotic Flowers @ Private Places
The surfaces of the monochrome paintings for Narcotic Flowers reflect objects fabricated in machine shops or industrial manufacturing plants. They quietly manifest in the gallery with a vacancy that is distant of the human hand, with each surface treated by a quick enamel paint job or a polyurethane and graphite wash. The monochromes proceed from a series of black-stripe paintings that drew upon concepts of seriality and the framework of stripe painting to voice dissent. Here, the paintings are positioned alongside posters, appropriated photographs and found objects. For this exhibition, Knight has worked with Xerox copies of floral arrangements originally published by his paternal grandmother and the scents worn by his mother while referencing photo archives of extremist actions taken from the 1970s onward. The resulting exhibition considers ideas of proximity and distance between the familial, the manufactured and industrial, and militant labor.
The surfaces of the monochrome paintings for Narcotic Flowers reflect objects fabricated in machine shops or industrial manufacturing plants. They quietly manifest in the gallery with a vacancy that is distant of the human hand, with each surface treated by a quick enamel paint job or a polyurethane and graphite wash. The monochromes proceed from a series of black-stripe paintings that drew upon concepts of seriality and the framework of stripe painting to voice dissent. Here, the paintings are positioned alongside posters, appropriated photographs and found objects. For this exhibition, Knight has worked with Xerox copies of floral arrangements originally published by his paternal grandmother and the scents worn by his mother while referencing photo archives of extremist actions taken from the 1970s onward. The resulting exhibition considers ideas of proximity and distance between the familial, the manufactured and industrial, and militant labor.
Narcotic Flowers was supported by the generous help of a 2017 Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission.