Dominique Knowles “The Solemn and Dignified Burial Befitting My Beloved for All Seasons”

Chapter NY

[Image: Dominique Knowles "The Solemn and Dignified Burial Befitting My Beloved for All Seasons" (2022) oil on linen, 46 1/2 × 64 1/2 in.]

This event has ended.

When I talk about pictures in my mind I am talking, quite specifically, about images that shimmer around the edges… The picture tells you how to arrange the words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what’s going on in the picture.
–Joan Didion

Chapter NY presents The Solemn and Dignified Burial Befitting My Beloved for All Seasons, Dominique Knowles’ first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will feature a suite of related and equally scaled paintings throughout the exhibition space.

Knowles’ paintings conjure the emotion, shared glances, mutual care, and loss experienced during a lifetime of caring for an animal companion. The immediacy of the paint presents the often rapid transition of death despite a lifetime of labored prevention. Warm ochre tones, pigments that embody the melding of being with soil, harken to memory eternal — like the first visions of animals painted across caves.

When viewed together the works appear united, as if carefully selected from a larger vision. At this scale, the works are positioned towards intimacy rather than monument as experienced in Knowles’ life size murals. Glimpses of recognizable forms disappear into the background of the paintings, suspending hazy figures in the space between memory and reality. This act of dissolving embodies the intimacy of rider with horse, writer with words, or body with earth.

Often let go without the honor of a memorial, Knowles’ paintings express the care of reliving an animal’s death. Depicting a memory instead of narrative, the works offer a ceremony by the artist and viewers who experience each work. The works honor lost companions by extracting their shimmering forms from the latent mind, letting them also rest in front of the artist’s eyes.

–Kate Sierzputowski

Dominique Knowles (b. 1996, The Bahamas) based in Chicago, IL and Paris, FR. He received both his MFA in Painting and BFA in 2017 from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent exhibitions include White Columns, New York, NY; Misako and Rosen, Tokyo, JP; KINDL, Berlin, DE; Institut Findlandais, Helsinki, FI; Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY; Vdrome, Milan, IT; Galerie Layr, Vienna, AT; Sperling, Munich, DE; Four Flags at Chicago Manuel Style, Chicago, IL; Soccer Club Club, Chicago, IL; The Green Gallery East, Milwaukee, WI; The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas; Nassau, Bahamas; Popop Studios, Nassau, Bahamas; The Bahamas International Film Festival, Nassau, Bahamas; The Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, Medulla Gallery, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,WI; 14°N 61°W, Martinique; Halle 14, Leipzig, DE; Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL; The Packing Plant, Nashville, TN; and Julius Caesar, Chicago, IL. Knowles has participated in a residency at The Suburban, Milwaukee, WI. Knowles is featured in publications such as Artforum, Frieze, Spike, The Chicago Tribune, Süddeutsche Zeitung, FAZ, Garage Magazine, Contemporary Art Daily, Art Viewer, Bad at Sports, Arc Magazine, Arts of the Working Class, Parnass, Kuba Paris, Blank Canvas, Das Kunstmagazin, The Seen Journal and The Poor Farm Press.

Joan Didion, “Why I Write” in Let Me Tell You What I Mean (New York: Knopf, 2021), 49-51.