Brian Knep

February 10 – March 10, 2007

The first in a series of pieces using biological
models to create organic patterns, Healing #1
regenerates after viewer interaction, but never
the same way twice.

The first in a series of pieces using biological
models to create organic patterns, Healing #1
regenerates after viewer interaction, but never
the same way twice.

BRIAN KNEP

February 10 – March 10, 2007

The projections all have an equilibrium that only the viewer can change, and it is through the viewer’s inquisitiveness, which the work incites, that they impart the information, or knowledge, within Knep’s piece. Christian Holland, Big RED and Shiny, 2006

For his first New York exhibition, Brian Knep, who combines art, architecture, and science, will exhibit video projected installations that are interactive. The installations are engaging and encourage audience participation, raising questions as to how they work and what they mean. Knep draws comparisons between the properties of organic life and human experience – contact, change, growth – and searches for what he calls “the soul in technology.”

The exhibition features a reworking of Deep Wounds, a public art work initially commissioned for Harvard University’s historic Memorial Hall, which was built to honor the 136 Harvard alumni who died in the Civil War on the Union side. As a counterpoint to the omission of the Confederate fatalities, in Knep’s installation visitors walk on floor panels to reveal descriptions of the 64 Harvard alumni who died fighting on the Confederate side. In his first narrative work, which won a 2006 International Association of Art Critics (AICA/New England) Award, Knep created a metaphor for historical wounds that have not yet healed.

Abstract works include the floor piece Healing, a seemingly magical carpet in which the morphing of organic shapes disappear and regroup into new patterns when the surface is walked upon or disturbed. With endless variation, the process can be seen as the behavior of an organism that when “wounded” tries to heal itself and become whole again.

Meditative works include Drift Grid, which contains the surprising discovery that the gaze of the spectator affects the behavior of projected images on wall panels that slowly drift upward according to a set of rules governing movement and growth. In the site-specific Drip, language-like patterns flow down a protruding wall, inhabiting the structural element to become a living architectural detail with archeological significance.

Brian Knep, who lives and works in Boston, is an artist-in-residence at Harvard Medical School. In 2006 he received LEF Foundation and Creative Capital Foundation Grants. Recent exhibitions include one-person shows at the MIT Museum, the New Britain Museum of Contemporary Art, and Arizona State University in Tempe and group shows at the Joseloff Gallery at University of Hartford and the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, MA. He will have one-person exhibitions at the University Gallery at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell (April 11 – May 11) and at Judi Rotenberg Gallery in Boston (April 21 – 29). Knep, who is trained in computer science and mathematics, has received two Academy Awards for digital technology development including one for Jurassic Park.

There will be a reception February 10, 6 – 8. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 10 – 6. Monday by

appointment. For information, contact Sarah H. Paulson at (212) 226-3232 or sarah@feldmangallery.com.