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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

In/Visible Is Up: Margot Quan Knight

posted by on April 23 at 14:19 PM

This month at James Harris Gallery is Margot Quan Knight’s coming-out party in Seattle.

She is, basically, a disillusioned photographer. A wonderfully disillusioned photographer. She’s become disillusioned from her fantasy (our collective fantasy?) that photographs describe, if not reality, then still a version of truth. Until recently, she made composed images of unreal events that revealed themselves to be fictions indicative of real sensations and experiences, often ones that defy time, like this one (that’s her):

Drop.jpg
Drop, 2006

But then she was hit by a car. And she started graduate school (MFA at Bard; she finishes this summer). And the result of those things intersecting with Berenice Abbott (and other readings in photographic history), a strobe-light dance she saw at Pacific Northwest Ballet, and the thought of her mother getting older resulted in a break—out of which came an entirely different body of work, all based on reflective surfaces.

Artists at the beginning of their careers—and sometimes, artists at any stage—may be doing great things, but they don’t always really know what they’re doing. That can be perfectly fine, or a disaster. In Quan Knight’s case, her eloquence is not necessary to understand her work, but it’s a very nice surprise. Listening to her will be well worth your time.

Click here for the podcast.

And because these works are all reflective, I’m posting a video (by Quan Knight) that depicts the works the way you would experience them, rather than the blank, more formal stills on the gallery’s web site.

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1

This is great. I love Margot's work. I look forward to seeing this show and experiencing it first hand. Sorry i can't be at the opening. Congratulations

Posted by Juniper Shuey | April 23, 2008 3:01 PM

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