HONG KONG.- Knowles’ work invites through the archetypal & moves beyond as an incredibly specific expression of interspecies companionship. At once a seemingly private language, its monumental character reveals that the work is generated from primordial knowledge. They garner strength from the formless, fluid movement of unbounded rhythm.

His poetics are epic in scale, with an intimate cadence that ebbs & flows in sub-realities. There’s a symbiosis of confessional narrative & emotional lyric, acting as a soft ground for a central figure of luminously erotic queer desire.

Romantic longing nourishes an empathic absorption into a space pulsating with aliveness. The aesthetics consistent resonance of humane & animal grief is redemptive. Through alchemy, there’s hope for rebirth as its ochre atmosphere breathes prenatal warmth & a givenness for meditations on ancient sentience.

This open & untethered vision of inter-being is more than a pollyannish dream of a beautiful ecology. The stakes of this cosmology are deep within solemn contemplation of what is nature, how does one maintain another’s quality of life & what capacity of being death doula allows for a way to die with dignity & grace.

Dominique Knowles

Dominique Knowles (b. 1996 in The Bahamas) lives and works in Chicago and Paris. Knowles received both his MFA in Painting as a New Artist Society Award scholar in 2020 as well as his BFA in 2017 from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); "The Solemn and Dignified Burial Befitting My Beloved for All Seasons", Andräkirche Salzburg, organised by Layr, Salzburg (2023); Chapter NY, New York (2022); "The Solemn and Dignified Burial Befitting My Beloved for All Seasons", Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna (2021); "The Sun Sinks", Soccer Club Chicago, Chicago (2020); "Ode to Tazz", The Green Gallery, Milwaukee (2019). His work has been in numerous recent group exhibitions including "Looking Back / The 12th White Columns Annual", White Columns, New York (2023); "The Animal Within – Creatures in (and outside)", mumok, Vienna (2022); "Portals", Misako and Rosen, Tokyo (2022); "Fifteen Painters", Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2021) amongst others. Knowles has participated in a residency at The Suburban (Milwaukee, WI) and has curated a group exhibition at The Condo Association (Chicago, IL). His work is in the permanent collections of mumok, Vienna and the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw.

Kiang Malingue
Dominique Knowles: The Solemn and Dignified
7 February - 9 March 2024