Superhost 2024
Spinello Projects presents Superhost by Canadian artist, Kris Knight, debuting a series of figurative paintings inspired by the historical notion of urban exodus during an epidemic. These paintings present light-drenched emotional portals of the past and present, where mundane queer moments have impact without being sensationalized. This is Knight’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.
Superhost is Knight’s pandemic garden series, inspired by the similarities of Victorian wellness during the tuberculosis pandemic of the 18th and 19th centuries and the connective social patterns to that of COVID19. These paintings return to the idea of being alone in the sense of wholeness: alone as in “all one.” Knight’s characters retreat from the muchness of their urban worlds for the stillness of gardens, country homes and rural Airbnbs. He cites his contemporary characters in bucolic locations referencing historical Victorian and Belle Époque garden paintings and expands his pastel palette to include the vivid, acidic greens that were popular during this era.
However, much like his prior works, a sense of quiet desire gives way to despair: the foliage of the garden becomes encroaching, window muntins feel like prison bars, and cabin fever sets in. Knight’s character’s indifference inevitably falters when reality creeps in that no one is immune to loss, sickness, or heartbreak. Nostalgia intensifies when restrictions arise and the desire to escape is insatiable. Like the shifting moods of his characters, the comforting green of a garden drenched in jubilance eventually fades to the cool moonlit shadows. Like many queer urbanites with rural backgrounds who felt alienated growing up, Knight’s complicated relationship with the country is evident in these works. The desire for belonging, mixed with never feeling at ease or safe, carries into adulthood and subtly plagues tender portraits and bucolic scenes of this exhibition.
A pandemic shakes the stupor out of life and dramatizes the truth of our condition: we are all vulnerable and cannot escape our common humanity and fate. Superhost invites the viewer into the private moments of his characters, demonstrating the conflict between aloneness and oneness.