Nick Knight: renaissance man encompassing so many talents and gifting them to us through his constantly evolving, ever curious and varied work. Brave enough to delve in humanities darkest psyches and patient enough to spend over three and a half years in the herbarium of London’s Natural History Museum mapping the historical movement of flora and fauna, from opium to cotton.
Initiated in 1993 for his installation of ‘Plant Power’ Flora, Knight chose a final 46 specimens (from over 6 million species!!) to photograph. “Some were like feathers of neon, breathtakingly delicate, others were like urban plans, architecturally precise… many were joyful splashes of color like children’s paintings, carefree, happy nonsense.” Never able to put the project to bed almost 15 years later we now get his first limited edition portfolio where Knight has chosen to release 15 images from this acclaimed publication. The prints, representative of the arresting diversity in botany that Knight found so exciting when he first gained access to the herbarium in 1993, will be showcased for the first time in his Bruton Place headquarters in London’s Mayfair.
These prints marvel in their simplicity, shot from above for the most part, borderless, projecting ad infinitum while colors seem to magically bleed, birth, transmute into lives in and of themselves. This collection reflects the multi layered artists endless need to project a nuanced and atavistic reality through detailed frameworks turned upside down and split apart. His relentless questioning and head butting of conditioning and his very natural uncontrived stance of never, EVER buying into built in dogma makes his work so interesting, so accessible and so palpable. We need more artists of this caliber, more people not taking no or yes for an answer, more individuals creating their own reality instead of gladly swallowing what they want to force feed us, Knight’s insistence for individuality and creative independence is the sweet reprieve.
Nick Knight – Flora
From October 11th to December 21st, 2012
SHOWstudio
1-9 Bruton Place
London, W1J 6LT – United Kingdom
Email: [email protected]
Tel: +44 207 399 4299
