Alexander/Heath Contemporary
is pleased to announce
An Exhibition by Painters, Writers
and Film Makers:
Russell Day & John Knecht
March 1 through March 29, 2024
“Cartoons for Dreams and Destiny”
OPENING RECEPTION:
Art-by-Night Friday, March 1, 2024, 5-9 pm
Both Artists will be present with talks at 7:30
CLOSING RECEPTION:
Friday, March 29, 2024, 6-9 pm
Opening Night – March 1, 2024
The Artist Russell Day, aka Russell Scott Day, works in high concept areas that can be dangerous. He has a destiny and has had a vision and can tell you why he does and says what he does and says. He is working to prevent the apocalyptic riot by building “Transcendia”, a nation of airports that is founded on the culture of airports that we know as most graceful, exciting, and civil.
The paintings in this exhibition are the renderings of an intense understanding of life that most of us do not even consider. We don’t live this thoroughly or passionately. It is the output of a truly unique mind.
Day exhibited at Alexander/Heath Contemporary in September of 2016.
Further Resources:
amazon.com/author/transcendian
youtube.com/user/Transcendian
transcendia.org
John Knecht has been active in making experimental and avant-garde film and video since the 1970s. His films, animated videos and multiple channel installations, paintings and drawings are informed by his rural Midwestern, evangelical upbringing in the 1950s. They reveal a fascination with unknown, imagined spaces that exist outside of our rational, physical world. Most of his better known work is animated, including The Possible Fog of Heaven and The Poxiox Series. The artist explains, “Welcome to my world. You enter at your own responsibility. I am providing the material for provocation. I am not providing the answers.”
Knecht’s films, videos and multiple channel installations have been shown all over the world. Recent exhibitions include: Considering the Probability of Divine Intervention, a five-channel installation at the Llewellyn Gallery, Alfred State College, Alfred, New York; Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel, a 15-channel installation at the Everson Museum, Syracuse, New York, now installed (in part) in the permanent collection of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, New York; The Urban Video Project, sponsored by Syracuse University, Light Works Gallery and the Everson Museum; Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel, Clifford Gallery, Colgate University, Hamilton, New York; First Person Cinema series, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado; Making Movies, Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center, Auburn, New York; The @ LAB, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio; Tou Scene Contemporary Art Center, Stavanger, Norway; Vienna Film Festival, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Mix Festival, New York City.
Recently retired, Knecht holds the Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of Art & Art History and Film & Media Studies, Emeritus at Colgate University. He held the chair in media studies at Colgate, where he taught since 1981. In addition, he served as chair of the Art and Art History Department from 1991 to 1999.
The artist also taught in the Semiotics Department at Brown University in 1980 as a visiting lecturer. He served as assistant professor in the School of Art at the University of Oklahoma from 1974 to 1978. From 1980 to 1982, he served as a member of the executive committee at the Collective for Living Cinema in New York. Knecht was a member of the board of governors of the National Conference on Undergraduate Research from 1993 to 1999.
Knecht holds a master of fine arts degree from Idaho State University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He served in Vietnam with the U.S. Army’s Ninth Infantry Division from 1967 to 1968.
Further Resources:
johnknechtart.com
2017 Exhibition at Alexander/Heath Contemporary
This exhibition is on display through Friday, March 29th.
Access is available during special exhibition hours or by appointment only:
Contact Ed Hettig:
hettig@alexander-heath.com or text 607.226.2473.