Annual Group Exhibition

Best of TAG
Annual Group Exhibition
December 28, 2010 - January 22, 2011
Reception: Saturday, January 8th 3-6pm

TAG Gallery Interviews Michael Knight

Austin 60 x 40" 
digiglyph 
Michael Knight 

Blackbirds become symbols in Michael Knight's imagery as he explores patterns of relocation and change.

In observation of your work one gets the impression that there is a ritual taking place. How would you account for this?

 I don’t see it as being ritualistic. My work is communicating the rhythms of migration and the change that occurs when someone with established patterns of living moves from one place to another and has to understand how to fit in. People move, establish themselves, and survive; these things are a part of migration. The black birds are symbolic of humans as survivors, and the concentric rings are symbolic of time passing, growth, change, and the ripple effect that these type of movements engender. I present symbols of human migration, travel and change, leaving and starting, endings and beginnings.


Who or what determines the meaning of your work?

 I would imagine that each viewer can establish a unique meaning by bringing their own personal history to the work. The viewer and I add a layer of meaning, as does the culture in which the work is viewed. How people might feel about the concept of border, crossings, migration, and change also adds a layer of meaning. I invite the viewer to draw their own conclusions about the ideas presented in my work.

 Does your life experience play a role in your imagery?

 Yes. My life experience has lead me to make certain conclusions about life and see the world in a particular way. I think humans have a proclivity to unravel their surroundings to find meaning, and we all have different ways of doing that. As I find things important, trivial, or significant, I want to express them through a visual means of communication. I am understanding my environment and picking out what’s important and what I want to share


Which facet of art do you find more favorable: aesthetic, conceptual, commentary, objectivity or something different entirely?

I find all of these to be equally significant and I emphasize one of those aspects more or less in a particular piece.


 
Michael Knight

 Michael Knight's exhibition opens November 30.

New Exhibition Featuring Shelley Adler, Eve Brandstein, and Michael Knight

November 30 - December 24, 2010

Reception:
Saturday, December 4th, 5- 8 PM

Artists' Q & A Panel:
Saturday, December 18th, 3 PM
(Followed by Poetry Reading by Eve Brandstein)

Shelley Adler: "New Work"

In her new exhibition, Shelley Adler calls upon her love of old photographs and transforms them into small scale oil paintings to capture moments of casual sublimity that often go unnoticed in our everyday lives. Exploring human body language and vibrant juxtapositions of color, Adler breathes life into vintage black and white photographs of people unknown to her. Adler's work is the thoughtful product of her intuitive response to modes of human expression. "I do feel that I am intuiting truth about [my subjects] as I paint them, and I try to communicate my understanding of them as I work to complete a painting," Shelley says. This exhibition also includes Adler's explorations in painting contemporary still lifes, landscapes, and portraiture.

Eve Brandstein: "Word Forms"

In her new exhibition, Word Forms, Eve Brandstein blends her painting's sensual symbolism with the emotive voice found in her poetry to create levels of harmony and tension between her writing and forms of visual expression. Brandstein paints her subjects from live models before turning to rhythmic lines of poetry that are then directly layered onto the canvas to accompany her ambiguously painted figures. In light of her new exhibition, Eve reflects, "For me, making art and writing poetry come from the same place and have the same urgency that pour out of me in different ways. It was only natural for me to allow the two mediums to meet this way." By pulling together these two art forms, Brandstein extracts a vital narrative that exposes what her painting and poetry cannot express alone.

Michael Knight: "Border Crossings"

In his latest exhibition, Border Crossings, artist Michael Knight uses the ubiquitous crow as a symbol for human migration prompted by instinct, necessity, and fate. Knight creates unique works that he coins "digiglyphs;" -- a combination of hand drawing and traditional monoprint techniques with digital manipulation. Distorted maps become the backdrop of silhouetted black birds within a repetition of hand-drawn rings in-order to symbolize the rippling effects of time. "Black birds are symbolic of humans as survivors," explains Knight, "My work is communicating the rhythms of migration and the change that occurs when someone with established patterns of living moves from one place to another and has to understand how to fit in." Knight's work beckons the viewer to reflect on how these rhythms affect their own lives and our world at large.