Robert Knott: a retrospective exhibition
Sculpture/Drawings/Photographs from 1980-2008
View an audio slideshow of Robert Knott's exhibition »
Professor of Art Robert Knott has been interested in making art of one kind or another since he was about 10 years old (little carved wooden animals), but he writes that over the years there have been many gaps in the production of objects. "As I look at the work pulled together for this exhibition, I find not only some persistent threads in the themes or construction of the objects but also references, conscious or unconscious, that I have been thinking and writing about for a much longer time."
Knott's sculptures often address contemporary political issues with a twist. "My master's thesis and other writings on Paul Klee have influenced my constant need to find some humor in even the darkest of subjects — what Klee called 'the visible world of laughter and the invisible world of tears.' Likewise, my doctoral dissertation, In Search of the Primal Unity which dealt with themes of metamorphosis in the painting and sculpture of the late 1920s and 30s, has undoubtedly informed the metamorphic qualities of many of my sculptures: a threatening weapon that can easily shift from machine-made precision to a menacing insect to a whimsical toy.
Others of Knott's works incorporate objects scavenged from beaches and abandoned buildings from Lubec and Campobella Island, New Brunswick where the dying fishing industry is changing the town's way of life. Items included in these works include beautifully spliced ropes, hand woven bait bags, bent wooden lobster hoops or hand carved stakes formerly used to string up herring in the now unused smoke houses. "While my sculptures are in no way meant to be a literal recreation of this way of life," Knott writes in an artist's statement at the beginning of the exhibition program, "hopefully in their themes about the sea and in the use of traditional materials and found objects, they will evoke something of what once was."
A series of photos on display taken in 2002 when Knott was the program director at Casa Artom in Venice also highlight a regionally specific site: laundry. "I decided to do a photo essay on some aspect of Venetian culture beyond the Venetian cliche. I was attracted to the juxtapositions of the vibrant spontaneity of the lines of wash against the underlying details of historic Venice."
The exhibition is on view through March 23 at the Charlotte and Philip Hanes Art Gallery in Scales Fine Arts Center. For more information, call 336.758.5585.
Read Winston-Salem Journal writer Tom Patterson's article "A Rich Retrospective: Exhibition at Wake Forest honors contemporary-art teacher." (Sunday, March 2, 2008)
