Karla Knight: Navigator

October 17, 2021 to May 8, 2022 | Opatrny Gallery Vestibule, Opatrny Gallery, Sound Gallery

Karla Knight has spent the last forty years creating an impressive body of work that spans painting, drawing and photography. Navigator, her first institutional solo show, will take the form of a focused survey, charting the development of her far-seeing language over a four-decade-long career.

Otherworldly abstract painting and symbols appear on top of vintage cloth background.

Abstract royal blueprinting with symbols in grids and floating orbs.

Abstract shapes that look like underwater or outer space crafts against a yellow background with grids and symbols floating around the perimeter.

Installation Images

Gallery space with two paintings on a wall in the foreground and a blue painting at an angle through a doorway.

Three large-scale unstretched paintings with similar dark motifs against cream colored background hung together on a wall.

Three walls of a gallery with one painting hung on both the left and right walls and three paintings hung on the center wall.

Gallery with a single painting on the center wall with a window on either side and a single painting hung on both the left and right walls.

A blue painting on the left and a multi-colored painting with eye-like symbols on the right.

Groups of small works on paper in four clusters on a wall.

Three groups of works on paper on a wall.

Knight's imagery is steeped in science, the occult, early twentieth century abstraction, Surrealism and Native American art. Her visual language is purposefully impenetrable—she offers no clues or methods to its decoding. For her, its true meaning must remain unnamed, as it is ultimately inspired by “the mysteries and absurdities of life.” Her dense paintings and works on paper swirl with graphic shapes, diagrams, and ciphers that appear both archaic and spaced-aged. The exhibition will track the vast range and evolution of Knight’s pictographic lexicon—the spaceships, floating orbs, and eyeballs, as well as the hieroglyphic-like lists, charts, codes, alphabets, and other invented symbols—that embody these all-over compositions. Similar to the trailblazing abstract artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) and the far-sighted symbolist Agnes Pelton (1881–1961), Knight’s enigmatic image databank channels a passionate engagement with spiritual or nonphysical realms. The exhibition will also debut an entirely new series, featuring what Knight refers to as “tapestries.” Using reclaimed cotton cut from circa 1940s–50s seed and grain bags purchased on eBay, Knight sews pieces together to form a patchwork composition. Unstretched, she draws and paints directly on the surface with flashe, colored pencil, and graphite, while hand embroidering select sections.

The exhibition is curated by Senior Curator Amy Smith-Stewart and will be accompanied by the artist’s first museum publication.

Watch artist Karla Knight and cartoonist Roz Chast's conversation and Q&A presented in-person at The Westport Library on December 7, 2021.

Press Release

Press

“Knight compares her mix of Roman characters and invented signs to automatic writing. 'People always ask me, is it a code? Is there a key? Are you sending a message? And I always say no.'”
—ARTnews

““It’s basically channeled,” she said. “The more I can’t explain my work, I think the more it succeeds.””
—The Ridgefield Press

“Knight’s work uses an irreverently complex pictorial language that borrows equally from the symbolic runes of ancient cultures and the imaginative fancy of science fiction. “Navigator,” the first museum survey of her career, offers an expansive view of her overarching visual tease — of signs and symbols that suggest language, mathematical equation, and even maps (hence “Navigator”) but reveal nothing beyond the visual pleasure of sharply made graphic aesthetics.”
—The Boston Globe

“The first museum show for a midcareer American artist known for overly full but elegant, diagram-like drawings.”
—The New York Times

“I don’t call myself a healer or medium, although I do think some of what I do is channeled — I think any good artist or writer or musician is a channeler. With the imaginary language I invented, for instance, I don’t know that it means anything. It may be complete gibberish. I do feel like I’m a bridge between worlds — that has always felt like my earthly job. But what that actually means, and what the other world is, I would never presume to say.”
—The New York Times

“The artist prefers not to be categorised into creative movements, explaining that she is unconcerned with current trends, politics, gender issues etc. Her focus lies in issues otherworldly, just as it has always been. She says, 'I see myself as a bridge between worlds, and do not presume to tell people what that might mean.'”
—Stir World

“To fully appreciate this floating cosmology of forms one must come closer, allowing these works to open up in terms of intricacy and delicateness, balancing the heavier black forms that dominate each work.”
—The Brooklyn Rail

“There is an irresistible temptation to try to identify the signs. Yet again, we are left with infinite questions. Do the forms in the center represent spacecrafts or a space station? Are they extraterrestrials? What message is communicated in the intricate symbols so neatly organized in the white grid? Is this a blueprint for a machine? Ultimately, Knight leaves no clues, allowing the viewer to parse meaning as they choose. Overall, the show is a celebration of some of life’s greatest mysteries, as well as an invitation to let your imagination take over.”
—Artillery Magazine

Funders

Generous support for Karla Knight: Navigator is provided by The O'Grady Foundation, Patricia and Lawrence Kemp, Diana Bowes and James Torrey, Cynthia Smith, Kristina and Philip Larson, and Ann and Mathew Wolf. The catalogue for Karla Knight: Navigator is generously supported by the Eric Diefenbach and James-Keith Brown Publications Fund and the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation.

Media support is provided by Connecticut Cottages & Gardens (CTC&G).

Related News

Press

For Karla Knight, Paranormal is Normal, The New York Times

An interview with the mystically inclined artist, who shares the interests of Hilma af Klint and Agnes Pelton.

Top image: Karla Knight: Navigator (installation view, left, Wayfinder 1; center, Wayfinder 2; right, Wayfinder 3, 2020), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, October 17, 2021 to May 8, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York. Photo: Jason Mandella