SOLO EXHIBITION: SECRETS ARE THE THINGS WE GROW @ MULHERIN+POLLARD NY, APRIL 4 - MAY 5TH, 2013

Image: "Home Cuts" oil on canvas, 30x40" 2013 

“Secrets Are The Things We Grow” – New Paintings By Kris Knight

Mulherin+Pollard, April 4-May 5^th, 2013, Opening Reception: Thursday April 4^th, 6-9PM

187 Chrystie Street, New York, NY 10002  tel (212) 967.0045/ (416) 993-6510

For more information, high res images or preview images please contact Katharine Mulherin at info@katharinemulherin. 

With “Secrets Are The Things We Grow” artist Kris Knight paints a cast of characters who consciously conceal aspects of themselves from those around them.  They hide truths of who they are, where they come from and whom they love. They fear shame, rejection, gossip and embarrassment. They whisper stories but never want the story to be about them. Secrets have roots, they have currency, they accumulate and grow with time; some are short lived, while others haunt generations.   Knight’s character’s front, they put on airs, and they pass; some bluff while others reveal their confessions without saying a word.

Stemmed from personal stories, these young men isolate themselves from those around them.  Some of Knight’s portraits appear as islands, while other paintings portray the bonds formed when secrets are revealed to those held closest. Within these portraits are references to the garden and exercises in pattern work representing how secrets are rooted and grow with time and sometimes take over.  These ambiguous portraits depict the balancing act of deeply holding secrets but longing to let them go.

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. 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 18^th Century French portraiture and Polaroid film.

Kris Knight spent his youth in six small towns in rural Ontario before moving to Toronto where he currently lives and works.   Since graduating from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2003, Knight’s practice has concentrated on thematic figurative works that are often as attractive as they are disturbing.  Knight started exhibiting with Katharine Mulherin in 2005.  In the past seven years he has exhibited internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions and various art fairs around the globe.   His work is included in an abundant of 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 and Found" (2011- Rize Art Gallery, Amsterdam), "Tragic Kingdom" (2011 - Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, Toronto and "A Deadly Nightshade" (2010 - Spinello Gallery, Miami).  Recent Group exhibitions include MIXTAPE (2012 - Labasse Projects, Los Angeles), Makin' It Natural (2012 - Mulherin + Pollard, New York), The Reflexive Self (2010 – Mike Weiss Gallery, New York) and New/Now (Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas).  Recent international art fairs include Volta New York (2013) Art Paris (2011), Toronto International Art Fair (2011) and Zona Maco, Mexico City (2010).  Recent Press has included cover stories in Public Art Magazine (2012), and Milan Vukmirovic’s Fashion For Men (2012) as well as articles in Miami New Times, Miami Sun Post, Toronto Life, Xtra Magazine and Pref Magazine and Gorgeous Gallery, an International overview of contemporary queer artists by David Leddick (Bruno Gmunder Verlag, 2012)

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Media:
Flavorwire "Secrets Are The Things We Grow : Kris Knight's Portraits of Men Are Hiding Something" by Chloe Pantazi. 

GAYLETTER: Kris Knight 

VAGA Magazine "Secrets Are The Things We Grow - Kris Knight"