Stephen Hunt and John Knight: Proximal Works In Situ
A two person exhibition at the Montana Artist Refuge Gallery in Basin, MT – October 2022
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This two-person art exhibition presents photography in the main gallery and a site-specific painting installation in the auxiliary space.
The two adjacent spaces—a repurposed 19th century bank and an abandoned stone-walled jail—offer visual perspectives on our exterior and interior worlds. The identity of the exhibition spaces dialogues with the work of each artist, and with one another.
In the main gallery, each large black and white photograph is an expression of Hunt’s love of the land. He presents the minutiae—an arrowleaf balsamroot flower, a snag, a humble horse barn—with the same reverence as a moonrise, a herd of buffalo, or the sweep of the Mission Range. The images elegantly reference the context, uses, history, and relationships between the natural world and the people, whom we never see.
The short walk between the spaces offers a moment in which to reflect—through a gate, following a brick and then dirt path.
The abandoned jail is the springboard for Knight’s site-specific practice where he creates work in response to a space. The architecture, and the history of the building and the town of Basin, provide him with formal elements to push against in his material dialogue. Monochromatic paintings, hung not quite as they would be in a formal gallery space, disrupt the chaos of the graffiti. A tension is created as they question what and whom the space is meant to hold.
Curator, Jenny Bevill [email protected]