Karla Knight
Karla Knight in her studio
\n
\nAndrew Edlin Gallery is pleased to announce\xa0Universal Remote, a solo exhibition of new work for artist Karla Knight, running from November 3 \u2013 December 22, 2023.\xa0 A solo display of Knight\u2019s work will be held concurrently at The Art Show (ADAA) at the Park Avenue Armory from November 1\u20135.
\n
\nOver the past four decades, Knight has executed her idiosyncratic visons of UFO related imagery with the stubborn persistence of an artist unbeholden to the dictates of art world trends, although contemporary interest in spiritualist art has certainly offered a favorable context. Knight\u2019s relationship with what might be broadly termed \u201cthe occult\u201d is rooted in her upbringing; her father authored publications on, among other subjects, UFOs and ghosts, and her grandfather, also a writer, penned a book about afterlife communication.
\n
\nHer solo exhibition at the Aldrich Museum in 2021-22 expanded Knight\u2019s recognition markedly and came at the same time she was beginning to experiment with weathered feedbags from the 1940s and \u201950s, attracted to their creamy color and the traces they bore of past lives. She calls these works \u201ctapestries,\u201d as she embroiders the fabric and embellishes it with a combination of acrylic paint pens, vinyl paint, colored pencil, and graphite.
\n
\nHer new\xa0Universal Remote\xa0series of drawings and tapestries riffs on the notion of channels with central motifs inspired by anachronistic television sets that hail from the early decades of the Cold War; a time when the frequency of UFO sightings was a source of great national anxiety.
\n
\nThe tapestry\xa0Universal Remote 1, 2022, is painted with a boxy television-like form\u2014or \u201creceiver,\u201d a word the artist relishes\u2014bearing her cryptic characters along with circles that suggest various dials and buttons: channel selectors, speakers, fine tuners, picture expanders. A large, rounded shape marked with blue crosshatching and abstract designs, some of which resemble yellow eyes with slivered pupils, overtakes the \u201cscreen.\u201d At the mandala\u2019s heart is Knight\u2019s returning volumetric orb, here coronated with concentric circles. This celestial sphere\u2019s significance denoted by its centrality to the composition, becomes a kind of universal picture, open to an endlessly expanding universe of possible readings.
\n
\nKarla Knight\u2019s work is currently featured in the group exhibition,\xa0Sightings, at the Sun Valley Museum of Art (ID), and is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), among others. A second edition of her Aldrich Museum exhibition catalogue,\xa0Navigator, with added images of recent works and a new essay by Cassie Packard will be available on November 1, 2023.
\n
\nKarla Knight (b. 1958) Big Night Vision, 2023 Flashe, acrylic marker, pencil, and embroidery on cotton 46 x 73 inches
\n
\nKarla Knight (b. 1958) Delphi 3, 2023 Flashe, acrylic marker, pencil, and embroidery on cotton 33.5 x 30 inches
\n
\nKarla Knight (b. 1958) Universal Remote 1, 2022 Flashe, acrylic marker, pencil, and embroidery on cotton 68 x 49 inches.