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Copyright Tom Knechtel | | | Knechtel, Tom (1952 - ) USA
A Middle-Aged Scheherezade, 1997
Oil on linen; 152 x 122 cm 90's
UID 102-312
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Biography
Tom Knetchel lives in Los Angeles, went to Cal Arts in the early seventies, and teaches in two of the leading art schools in this city. The artist said: "I think of my painting as being filled with the references to literature and language: metaphor, rhymes, narrative, character... my work can be described as fitting into an investigation of identity and sexuality which is very prevalent in this country. I often think of my painting as a kind of imaginary theatre company.. examples of what theatre thrills me: Ariane Mnouchkine and the Theatre du Soleil. Giorgio Strehler and the Piccolo Teatro. Charles Ludlam and the Theatre of the Ridiculous. Drag. Puppet theatres. Kabuki and bunraku from Japan, kathakail from India. Circuses. Commedia dell'arte... Only in the theatres listed above does my love of allegory, artificiality, spectacle, wonder and narrative find itself amply gratified.... and since I don't get to see them often, that appetite goes roaring into my painting. The characters who inhabit my paintings are not symbols but a repertory company of actors anxious to cram into the next tableau.... I mentioned narrative. That's one other element which feeds my life in the studio. I love the kinds of stories which spiral and meander, lost in the pleasures of narrative invention: fairy tales, The 1001 Nights, Tristam Shandy, nineteenth-century novels, pornographic fantasies. I suppose that I am not nervous about my love of literary content, the alleged bugbear of contemporary painting, because it's balanced by the intense pleasure I get from the physical language of paint, the visceral form of the material even when it's not engaged in representation. He exhibited at PPOW Gallery in New York in 1997.
Exhibitions
On Wanting to Grow Horns: The Little Theater of Tom Knechtel (Hawaii) Contemporary Museum, The (Honolulu, Hawaii), USA 18-04-2003 ~ 15-06-2003
On Wanting to Grow Horns: The Little Theater of Tom Knechtel (LA) Ben Maltz Gallery, The, USA 01-07-2003 ~ 30-09-2003
On Wanting to Grow Horns: The Little Theater of Tom Knechtel (Seattle) Henry Art Gallery (University of Washington), USA 01-07-2003 ~ 01-09-2003
On Wanting to Grow Horns: The Little Theater of Tom Knechtel (Greensboro) Weatherspoon Art Museum, The (Greensboro), USA 21-04-2002 ~ 14-07-2002
The Infant Griffin and Other Recent Drawings Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, USA 26-02-2000 ~ 23-04-2000
Bibliography
L.A. Portraiture: Post-Cool, 1999 Published by Art in America (Oct)
On Wanting to Grow Horns: The Little Theater of Tom Knechtel, 2005 Published by Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design
The Infant Griffin and Other Recent Drawings, 2000 Published by Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum
Tom Knechtel's Intimate Spectacles, 1998 Published by Art Issues (Nov-Dec), L.A.
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