Et al. is pleased to present Alive! With Pleasure, Rainen Knecht’s first exhibition at the gallery. 13 new works, integrating paintings into sculptural frames, explore a range of materials and themes while remaining adamantly playful.
From Rainen:
The figures depicted here are in conversation with everyone from Fragonard to Aline Kominsky-Crumb, existing between delicately rendered beauty and Garbage Pail Kid putrescence. Often bodies are distorted, hybrid with animals or otherwise engaged with the grotesque. These choices are specifically body-horror and investigate my interest in myth and fairy tales. Narratives slide easily between allegory and personal experience. The figures depicted hover between self-portrait and cartoonish stylized form. Animals proliferate. This work draws from complex and somewhat contradictory sources; epic figures of crones, ogresses or gorgons pulled from mythological or folk traditions to high/ pop cultural references: a sleeping Ophelia resembling a direct relative of Princess Fiona from Shrek.
Caretaking for my dying mom, I noticed that the chemotherapy had both strange and beautiful effects on her body. Her eyelashes became so thick they looked like spider legs and her nails grew in, strong and pink, sometimes bleeding at the cuticle. We joked about her "cancer beauty routine". Her physical metamorphosis revealed the body to me as a stubborn yet transformative object. It was a tableau of beauty and terror. Confronted with the strange unbelievability of death, I was compelled to see the humor and pathos in having a body, as well as the futility in hating that body or trying to control it.
These new works are hybrids of relief, soft sculpture, wood shop experiments and paintings in their own right. The combination of oil painting and oddball frame isn’t a completely new intervention. These works are the somewhat logical extrapolation of a long time interest in framing devices, as well as a history of working and studying the decorative arts (and crafts). The junkyard is in the gallery—- as well as the beaded cobwebs of the mind, nothing is precious except life! Go forward and be dazzled!