Metro 5 Gallery upcoming Knight 2007

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Jasper Knight - 2007

Nov 14 - Dec 2

"Jasper Knight has a strong signature style. Drawing on a residency at the Josetti Hofe studios in Mitte, Berlin, Knight has transformed Berlin into his own image. The artist travels widely and his shows have almost become a travel diary.

It has often been said that Knight's images straddle painting and the constructed object. To understand this statement is to understand how Knight's painting practice fits within post-modernity.

Clearly the work is figurative and expressionistic like the early American work of the 40s. He privileges the abstract so much, though, that sometimes the subject is unclear; the splatter, drips and the materiality of the paint and the surface become the subject, as in a 1950s Pollock. The gestural trace of Knight is obvious. But then comes the constructed base, like a minimalist throwback. Knight has a team of joiners perfecting this part of the process using laser-cut Perspex, sawn industrial materials and wooden bases. Unpainted, the surfaces themselves are works of art. Finally the Pop aesthetic is inverted through the personal immediacy of the images, based solely on the unmediated experience of Knight himself.

Though I have suggested that his images are diaristic, there is also equivocation in Knight's subject matter - a certain cool detachment. As with the pop artists before him, it is not clear whether there is critique or merely a personalised view. For instance, there is a degree of distance in the work Berlin Monument. Who is it a monument to? The painting, although figurative, becomes also a play of horizontals and verticals as if the columns are purely abstract, a monument to Mondrian perhaps.
Saw-toothed Roof could be an allusion to the industrial past of Berlin or to the 45-degree angle of a minimalist painting. In Noodle Shop, the big bold yellow digger, which would have been as strong as a Tonka truck, is painted with none of these qualities, as if Knight can see nothing but the yellow. The digger is literally melting away under Knight's gaze. Alexanderplatz No. 2 is a masterful play on spatial conventions. What looks almost a monochrome blue becomes a clear portrayal of a blue crane and generator via a few horizontal baby blues, a change in texture and some outlines. On the second look these become two planes of blue again.

All these aspects are present in S-Bahn, a five-panelled work which is Knight's biggest to date. The title again has a generality to it - the building, its architect and its history are not brought to the fore. The yellow train, like a slash of modernism against the old building, is the primary subject. The panels are clear, the drips, and spatter all come forward. Yet against this, space is captured perfectly. The diagonal of the train and the bridge help, but even the drips delineate space. In the fifth panel, a foreground lighting pole is boldly painted on, the energy of the strokes palpable, and somehow this brings it forward in space against the clearly painted bridge and its stone features. Incidental surface drips become representational texture. The blinding white sky, reminiscent of an illuminated yet overcast day, is also the white of the canvas (or Perspex here) reasserting itself. This work is a sustained study on the binaries of modernism, representation/figuration, surface/space, constructed minimalism and the painterly trace. That Knight does all this in the one object, though, is what marks this work as postmodern, subtly moving the viewer through different modes.

Although he is still under thirty, this is his eighth solo show. Knight has been hung in many prestigious traditional prizes such as the Archibald, Wynne Prize, and the Blake Religious Prizes. He has been equally feted in the highly respected Helen Lempriere Prize for emerging artists, most usually home to video and performance art ahead of traditional painters. Knight's work is fun, shiny and engaging but it is also grounded in broader questions dealing with painting's place after modernity. Provocatively too, Knight asks whether Australian painters should turn away from landscape and towards urbanscape - and preferably the urbanscape of London, Beijing, and Berlin, all in one year".

Oliver Watts, Sydney, 2007

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Jasper Knight - 2007	Nov 14 - Dec 2
	"Jasper Knight has a strong signature style. Drawing on a residency at the Josetti Hofe studios in Mitte, Berlin, Knight has transformed Berlin into his own image. The artist travels widely and his shows have almost become a travel diary. It has often been said that Knight's images straddle painting and the constructed object. To understand this statement is to understand how Knight's painting practice fits within post-modernity.
Clearly the work is figurative and expressionistic like the early American work of the 40s. He privileges the abstract so much, though, that sometimes the subject is unclear; the splatter, drips and the materiality of the paint and the surface become the subject, as in a 1950s Pollock. The gestural trace of Knight is obvious. But then comes the constructed base, like a minimalist throwback. Knight has a team of joiners perfecting this part of the process using laser-cut Perspex, sawn industrial materials and wooden bases. Unpainted, the surfaces themselves are works of art. Finally the Pop aesthetic is inverted through the personal immediacy of the images, based solely on the unmediated experience of Knight himself.
	Though I have suggested that his images are diaristic, there is also equivocation in Knight's subject matter - a certain cool detachment. As with the pop artists before him, it is not clear whether there is critique or merely a personalised view. For instance, there is a degree of distance in the work Berlin Monument. Who is it a monument to? The painting, although figurative, becomes also a play of horizontals and verticals as if the columns are purely abstract, a monument to Mondrian perhaps. Saw-toothed Roof could be an allusion to the industrial past of Berlin or to the 45-degree angle of a minimalist painting. In Noodle Shop, the big bold yellow digger, which would have been as strong as a Tonka truck, is painted with none of these qualities, as if Knight can see nothing but the yellow. The digger is literally melting away under Knight's gaze. Alexanderplatz No. 2 is a masterful play on spatial conventions. What looks almost a monochrome blue becomes a clear portrayal of a blue crane and generator via a few horizontal baby blues, a change in texture and some outlines. On the second look these become two planes of blue again.
All these aspects are present in S-Bahn, a five-panelled work which is Knight's biggest to date. The title again has a generality to it - the building, its architect and its history are not brought to the fore. The yellow train, like a slash of modernism against the old building, is the primary subject. The panels are clear, the drips, and spatter all come forward. Yet against this, space is captured perfectly. The diagonal of the train and the bridge help, but even the drips delineate space. In the fifth panel, a foreground lighting pole is boldly painted on, the energy of the strokes palpable, and somehow this brings it forward in space against the clearly painted bridge and its stone features. Incidental surface drips become representational texture. The blinding white sky, reminiscent of an illuminated yet overcast day, is also the white of the canvas (or Perspex here) reasserting itself. This work is a sustained study on the binaries of modernism, representation/figuration, surface/space, constructed minimalism and the painterly trace. That Knight does all this in the one object, though, is what marks this work as postmodern, subtly moving the viewer through different modes.



	Although he is still under thirty, this is his eighth solo show. Knight has been hung in many prestigious traditional prizes such as the Archibald, Wynne Prize, and the Blake Religious Prizes. He has been equally feted in the highly respected Helen Lempriere Prize for emerging artists, most usually home to video and performance art ahead of traditional painters. Knight's work is fun, shiny and engaging but it is also grounded in broader questions dealing with painting's place after modernity. Provocatively too, Knight asks whether Australian painters should turn away from landscape and towards urbanscape - and preferably the urbanscape of London, Beijing, and Berlin, all in one year". Oliver Watts, Sydney, 2007