In mild of a transfiguration, these three work visualize an emotional panorama stuffed with reverence and sincerity. The cosmology of Knowles’ relationship with horses – notably in mourning and demise—typically reveals his work as a sensibility. Like a medieval grave the place horse and rider bones have been positioned collectively in burial, it’s troublesome to separate loss, devotion, and intimacy from this relationship. By means of the canonical determine of a horse’s ghost, Knowles’ subject material expresses a philosophy. Out of precept, panorama presents a connection to the bottom as being a sanctuary. The horse and rider grow to be metaphors for a way of aliveness and the everlasting, ceremony and spirituality, portal and horizon, rewilding and cohabitation.
Physicality is at all times part of Knowles’ work. The exhibition house asserts itself with dappled mild coming by way of {a photograph} on the window and Japanese incense partaking the sense closest associated to reminiscence. His arch formed canvases act like holy structure, mimicking an altar or the cavernous ceiling of a church. Ochres, umbers, siennas, and inexperienced earths, stored shadowy and tonal, harken to a bucolic prehistory. The embodied expertise of portray repetitive, singular brushstrokes turns into synonymous with brushing a horse’s again. Like a Caspar David Friedrich portray the place the movement of waves crashing towards rock brings us nearer to the elegant, Knowles’ abstraction suspends the much less comfy feelings related to grief and care.
By exhibiting these works publicly, there’s an implicit name for communal engagement. Knowles’ rejects dissociation, providing another ethic to a tradition refusing to acknowledge demise of any form, not to mention that of an animal companion. Life with a horse requires a steadiness of listening and acceptance, integrity and freedom. In Knowles’ work, that dance is harmonized with the thriller of a divine encounter.
at Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles
till March 29, 2025
