A Little Time Out

Galerie Alain Gutharc is pleased to present A Little Time Out, the second solo exhibition of artist Kris Knight with the gallery, opening April 27th, 2019. The show will comprise of new paintings on canvas and paper by the artist that centers around the artist longing for quiet though depictions of the everyday contemporary queer male experience. With this new series of oil paintings the artist focuses on his own interiority and the personal experiences of the queer men around him, through the depiction of representational images that portray intimate environments both in solitude and togetherness. Drawing inspiration from personal experience, as well photographic source material often portraying his friends and acquaintances, Knight creates paintings informed by dichotomies that are often laced with sensuality and humour. In a culture of elevated anxiety, greater speed, production and expectation it’s often a struggle to hear oneself – Knight’s paintings present a near impossible desire to shut out distraction. The works on view escape the noise of daily life and leverage the quiet, conveying the intimacy of portraits, bodies, love and touch. One can live in a constant state of something humming in the background and not be aware of it and this can be said about Knight’s paintings as well – his somber reflections of daily life often have a layer of underlying discomfort of total quiet. With A Little Time Out, Knight moves his work away from the performer/theatrical narrative of his past series and focuses on the domestic – images of self-care, exercise, wellness, leisure, intimacy and travel presenting paintings that are at once nostalgic as they are about moving forward. * Kris Knight is a Canadian artist whose paintings puncture the membrane between dream and reality, historical and contemporary, light and dark. Within their apparent ambiguity, Knight’s sensitive character based paintings and portraits of queer men are an evocative combination of romanticism and nostalgia, exploring notions of performance in both an everyday and theatrical dimension. His pastel and tonal oil paintings conjure a series of shifting moods, themes and experiences that are connected by a wide range of positions regarding the private and public self. Some works are dark and melancholic; others are tinged with notes of humor and sensuality, sweetness, elegance and light. Kris Knight (b. 1980, Canada) is a Toronto based artist who received his Associate degree from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCADU) in 2003. His work has been exhibited internationally over the past decade including solo and group exhibitions and art fair features in Toronto, New York, Miami, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Los Angeles and has been featured in numerous international publications such as Interview Magazine, Vogue, Public Art, Harper’s Bazaar, The Globe and Mail, WWD, Fashion For Men, Esquire, GQ, The Miami New Times and L’Officiel Hommes. His work is included in numerous public and private collections including the Royal Bank of Canada, The Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, The Oppenheimer Collection, The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, 21C Museum of Contemporary Art, The Agnes Etherington Art Centre of Queen’s University, and corporate collections like Gucci, with whom the artist collaborated with in 2014/15 on numerous projects including a dark and mystical reimagining of the house’s iconic floral pattern dubbed “Flora Knight”.