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A Portable Model Of?, 2019
ARTIST: John Knuth, Born Minneapolis, MN 1978 | Active Los Angeles, CA

John Knuth received an MFA from the University of Southern California and a BFA from the University of Minnesota. Knuth's recent solo exhibitions include Powerplant at Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy; Base Alchemy at 5 Car Garage, Santa Monica, CA; Master Plan at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, IL; Elevated Uncertainty at Marie Kirkegaard, Copenhagen, Denmark; and Fading Horizon at Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA. His works have recently been included in group shows at International Print Center, New York, NY; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KY; MassArt, Boston, MA; Self-Titled, Tilburg, NL; Loudhailer, Greene Exhibitions, China Art Objects, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, CA, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

John Knuth's creative conjurings challenge traditional notions of art-making, even in this millennium. His paintings force extreme tension between the sacred and the profane, creating stunning works by way of indelicate techniques. Knuth's mission is to take something traditionally regarded as base and to make it into something magnificent, where the materials feel secondary to the radical result. Knuth's approach is alchemical. Like an art world diviner, he conjures the elements, from making burn paintings with distress flares and metallic space blankets to using fly regurgitation to make the most incandescent, shimmering paintings. He has perfected his process using flyspeck, which can be said to fall within the art historical continuum that includes the Pre-Raphaelites' Mummy Brown or Chris Ofili's elephant dung.

Knuth first gained attention for his fly paintings in 2013 when The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, made a documentary that explored his leveraging of the biological processes of flies to create abstract landscapes on canvas. The artist relishes the unpredictable outcomes of these fly works, likening the flies' organic chaos to the hectic nature of the modern urban environment. The works are landscapes that explore the boundary between beauty and decay, and the line between attraction and revulsion. For his most recent series, Knuth experimented with globes: "With the globes, I wanted to bring a new format to the approach and dialogue with which I'm engaging. In this case, it's very literal. We are irreparably changing the earth. With every shining, gleaming new structure we erect, we are changing the climate, the environment, the landscape. I am using an abstract process, but the message is direct. And it needs to be, because there is an increasing sense of desperation. I certainly feel it. So, while I'm dealing a lot with process and its transformative capacity, I'm really most interested in the realities of our world."

Acrylic and flyspeck on globe
15 × 14 × 13 inches
Courtesy of the Artist and Hollis Taggart