Clive Knights
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Clive Knights STATEMENT Inspired by Aristotle’s definition for making good metaphors as “having an eye for the similarity in dissimilars,” each collage becomes an opportunity to gather from existing worlds and, through the metaphoric turn, generate a new world, one that is shared by the seemingly disparate visual contributors, an emergence of a new community of manifest meaning, awaiting the participation of viewers. Having made collages for over 30 years, predominantly for private rumination or as preludial studies for architectural projects, the most recent, illustrated here, are fabricated by hand from layered paper and acetate, 4.5” x 6.5,” and they are from a series pondering the institutionalization of the four elements: earth, air, water and fire. BIO I am a collage artist and print-maker living in Portland, Oregon, as well as being a Professor of Architecture and the Director of the School of Architecture at Portland State University. My art practice includes mixed media collage and monotype printmaking from my own, purpose-built studio called “corpus”. I hold professional architectural design undergraduate and graduate degrees from Portsmouth Polytechnic, United Kingdom, and a Master of Philosophy in Architectural History and Theory from Cambridge University. My primary areas of creative research include the exploration of the cultural meanings of artful representation understood through the phenomenology of the human body, with particular reference to the writings of Merleau-Ponty; and the revelatory capacity of metaphor in poetic work, inspired by the hermeneutic philosophers Gadamer and Ricoeur. I have exhibited art and design work internationally, including three projects at the 1985 Venice Biennale for Architecture. I have shown mixed media work in public settings, such as the Northwest Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum, Washington, in 2004. Alongside publication of theoretical writings in multiple journals and books, I have designed and built several full-scale works including the Christiane Millinger Oriental Rug Gallery in Portland (with Michael Gibson, 2000), and Riverhouse, a private dwelling on the Columbia River in Cathlamet, Washington (with Louise Foster, 2002). My current, ongoing project is an interpretive study of the “involuntary” dimensions of being human incorporating a series of monotypes, mixed media collages, maquettes and full-scale thematic structures directly engaging the human body. I have never been represented by a gallery, so much of my art work has been disseminated privately to friends and acquaintances only, but I remain open to the possibility of a more formal public face for my collage work. ARTIST CONTACT (503) 725-3349 IMAGES
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