Kris Knight
Kris Knight is a Canadian artist whose paintings puncture the membrane between dream and reality, historical and contemporary, light and dark. Within their apparent ambiguity, Knight’s sensitive character-based paintings and portraits of men are an evocative combination of romanticism and nostalgia, exploring notions of performance in both an everyday and theatrical dimension. His pastel and tonal oil paintings conjure a series of shifting moods, themes, and experiences that are connected by a wide range of positions regarding the private and public self. Some works are dark and melancholic; others are tinged with notes of humour and sensuality, sweetness, elegance and light.
Born in Windsor (ON), Kris Knight lives and works in Toronto. He received his Associate degree from the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCADU) in 2003 His work has been shown internationally over the past decade including solo, group exhibition and art fair features in Toronto, New York, Miami, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Los Angeles. He has been featured in numerous publications such as Interview Magazine, Vogue, Public Art, Harper’s Bazaar, The Globe and Mail, WWD, The Miami New Times and L’Officiel Hommes. His work is included in numerous public and private collections including the Royal Bank of Canada, The Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, The Oppenheimer Collection, The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, 21C Museum of Contemporary Art, The Agnes Etherington Art Centre of Queen’s University, and corporate collections like Gucci, with whom the artist collaborated with in 2014/15 on numerous projects including a dark and mystical reimagining of the house’s iconic floral pattern dubbed “Flora Knight”.
Recent Exhibitions
A Symphony of Untold Depths - Group show
From July 15 to September 2nd, 2023
Auscultate
From October 21 to November 21, 2020
