John Knight

John Knight is a conceptual artist based in Los Angeles, California, known for his in situ artworks. 

Biography of John Knight

John Knight was born in 1945 in Hollywood, USA, and currently resides and works in Los Angeles, USA. He earned his M.F.A. from the University of California, Irvine, in 1973.

Over the years, Knight has held numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, showcasing his work at notable venues such as the Cabinet Gallery in London, the CCA Gallery in Kitakyushu, Galerie Neu in Berlin, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

His work has been featured in major group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial in New York, Documenta 7 and 5 in Kassel, and exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. 

John Knight's works have found homes in various private and public collections, such as the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago), Frac Centre-Val de Loire (Orleans), Institut d'art contemporain/Frac Rhône-Alpes (Villeurbanne), Nora Eccles Harrison Museum (Logan), Storm King Art Center (Mountainville), and many more.

John Knight's Art Style

For the past seven or eight years, John Knight's work has been focused on design and the presentation of images. While this is a concern shared by all visual artists in a general sense, Knight's interest is particularly specific. He is drawn to and even aims for "good" design—design that is often associated with commercial, graphic, or interior contexts.

The images he presents are inherently public, contrasting with traditional artistic icons that are whole and absolute; instead, Knight's work packages, and masks, and disassembles them. However, the subjects of Knight’s designs, the clients of his campaigns, are situated within the art world. Here, he exposes the interplay between art's imagery and design's economic underpinnings, intertwining one another.