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Christopher Knowles at Gavin Brown
Art in America, Jan, 2005 by Edward Leffingwell
Secure in his search for meaningful linkages among the things of the world, Christopher Knowles has devised a joyful means of expressing the organizing principles through a concrete poetry of typed words and drawings composed with type, ink and felt markers. This show offered more than 50 drawings from 1977 to the present. In an untitled work under Plexiglas, ca. 1980, he typed "My name is Christopher Knowles," adding that he writes and does typings. "I type designs. I type songs. And I type lists of top hits." Considered autistic in 1973 when, as a 14-year-old, he met Robert Wilson, Knowles began a collaboration with the director and designer that continues today. He exhibited with Holly Solomon in 1978 and 1979 and at the Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, in 1985; he has appeared in recent group exhibitions at CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco, and the Brooklyn Museum. While he appeared in the journal Semiotext(e) in the company of Jack Smith, the Ramones, Kathy Acker, William Burroughs, John Giorno and others in 1978, his work recalls Carl Andre's obsessively composed typed poetry of the early 1960s.
He lists the top 50 hits of 1967 to 1970, beginning with the Young Rascals' saccharine "Groovin" through Bobble Gentry's "Ode to Billy Joe," the Doors, Dylan and the Beatles. He typed the Seattle monument Untitled (Space Needle), 1980, on a nearly 5-foot roll of paper, presented here in a vitrine. On a winter day in 1982, he made a transcription from Patty Hearst's autobiography on a 7-foot roll of paper--Untitled (Patty Hearst). Another vitrine held a Kerouacian 37 1/2-foot roll, Untitled (Top 3000 of Rock and Roll), beginning with Gloria Gaynor's 1979 anthem "I Will Survive." In 2004 he typed grids of the lower-case letter "c" in red and black, and in 1983, in red and green, the muntins and frame of a skylight he observed and found pleasing. Having typed Ronald Reagan's 13-figure budget in 1983, in 2004 he adjured, "We must say to President Bush, shame, shame, shame on you."
In 1985 he drew three nearly identical self-portraits and constructed two grids made up of piles of cut paper--one of hexagons and another of crosses--displayed on plinths. In 1989 he produced the oil-marker paintings on canvas included here, scenes from Wilson's 1987 Parzival, in which Knowles played the title role of the innocent fool. That same year he starred in Richard Rutkowski's film named for the Donovan hit "Sunshine Superman," presented here on a monitor in DVD format. Costumed as Superman, Knowles types a window grid, builds a flag of Legos, listens to the sound of batteries rolling down a staircase. He spells out Donovan's full name aloud and asks, "Do you know what I mean? Would you like to sit down and say good morning?"
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