John Knecht will give an artist talk on Thursday, February 16 at 6:30pm in the Everson Museum of Art auditorium. A series of drawings and animations from Knecht’s recent series, Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel, will also be on view in the Everson’s galleries from January 28 – March 4, 2012. For more information, go to: everson.org.

About the Work

From the artist’s Statement:
Things have been falling in my videos for decades. It was at first formal. Falling things filled the frame and made a complicated cinematic space. The things falling , wishbones, test tubes, martini glasses, plastic strawberries that looked like a human heart, cement blocks and infected molars; increasingly became an atmosphere, functioning both as a formal device and a metaphorical space.

There is a drawing in the collection of the Queen; hanging in Buckingham Palace by Leonardo daVinci which depicts a deluge of raining everyday objects: rakes, funnels, lamps and general debris. The title of the drawing is “A Cloudburst of Material Things”. It is graphite on paper and credited to daVinci. It is dated 1500. The drawing is torn in half so only a part of the drawing remains. I have struggled to find out more about the piece and there is virtually nothing written about it.; but I am haunted by it. “DELUGE” is directly informed by the overwhelmed totality of daVinci’s image. What was he thinking?

“ANIMA” is the Latin word to describe something moving. It also was used to refer to the concept of the “soul”. The semiotics are what you make of them. The fleeting of knowledge and the ethereality of IT all.

I am interested in the spectacle of the super natural. My favorite movies were made between 1891 and 1910. I study the “magic” films of George Melies and Segundo de Chomon over and over again. Good art asks more questions than it provides answers for.

My work is hand drawn, first with pencil on paper and then in Photo Shop. I admire the essential. “DELUGE” and “ANIMA” are made frame by frame reflecting my love of painting and the ability of the motion picture to sneak up on you. I am providing a modernist out-look at a post modern apocalypse.

John Knecht
Moscow Road
November 2011

About the Artist

John Knecht has actively exhibited, taught and programmed video art nationally and internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include, “Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel” at Clifford Gallery, Colgate University (2011); “First Person Cinema” at University of Colorado (2010), as well as participation in many group shows and festivals, including “Artists of the Hudson Mohawk Region” at Albany Institute of Arts and Science (2011); “Made in New York” at the Schweinfurth Art Museum, Auburn NY (2011); “Stone Canoe” XL Projects Gallery, Syracuse (2011), and “UPPER” touring with the Black Maria Film Festival in Spring 2009.

Knecht holds an endowed Chair at Colgate as the “Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of Art and Art History and Film and Media Studies”, where he has taught since 1981.

Visit the artist’s website: johnknechtart.com