The Early Riser, Oil on Canvas, 40x48" 2012
Kris Knight is a Canadian painter whose work examines performance in relation to the construction, portrayal and boundaries of sexual and asexual identities. Drawing from personal histories of rural escapism through imagination, Knight paints disenchanted characters that are lost between youth and adulthood; they hide their secrets, but desperately long to let them go. His mythical and ambiguous portraits are a synthesis of fantasy and real-world memory; they tiptoe between the dichotomies of pretty and menace, hunter and hunted, innocence and the erotic.
Throughout Knight's professional practice, he has created thematic bodies of work that reference historical notions of regality, mysticism, romanticism and symbolism. He often skews these concepts with contemporary interests in androgyny, psychotropic alterations and the post-modern gaze. Knight's lustrous classical cum illustrative figurative paintings, stride between a contradicting palette of sensual primaries and ghostly pastels, reflecting his adoration for 18th Century French portraiture.
Kris Knight spent his youth in six small towns in rural Canada before moving to Toronto where he currently lives and works. Knight started exhibiting professionally in 2005. In the past seven years his paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions and international art fairs. His work is included in public and private collections, most notably The Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, The Oppenheimer Collection, The Agnes Etherington Museum of Kingston, The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, and 21c Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.
Recent solo exhibitions include The Lost & Found at Rize Art Gallery in Amsterdam, Tragic Kingdom at Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects in Toronto and "A Deadly Nightshade" at Spinello Gallery in Miami. Knight will make his New York solo debut this December at Mulherin + Pollard. Recent press has included the Miami New Times, Miami's Sun Post, Xtra Magazine, Pref Magazine and Toronto Life. Knight will also be included in Gorgeous Gallery, an international overview of contemporary queer artists by David Leddick (Taschen - Bruno Gmunder Verlag) coming out this June.
For more information, media images or to get on the preview list for Kris Knight's work, please contact Katharine Mulherin at (416) 993.6510 or email at info@katharinemulherin.com