Alison Knowles, The Boat Book, 2014-15Wood and metal frame with silkscreen, digital print on silk, collage, assemblage, personal ephemera, beans, books, fishing net, photographs, ship anchor, fabric tunnel, electrical lights, audio recording, etc.,
Courtesy the artist and James Fuentes Gallery, New York
Photo: Bryan Conley, Carnegie Museum of Art
Alison Knowles
Forum Gallery
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh [link]
May 20-October 24, 2016
The Carnegie’s gallery is exactly as Dick Higgins described Knowles’s Big Book decades ago: as an “anthology,” an “accumulation” about situation and experience. Her survey, like this life-size, live-in publication and its ancestor, The Boat Book, cannot be described in any other way, except to borrow another of Higgins’s terms: intermedia. Objects spanning Knowles’s earliest Fluxus activities until now both excite and calm, puzzle and amaze, and ignite the senses. Sounds of beans shuffled by feet and the artist’s gentle voice float throughout, drawing in adults and children alike to experience excerpts of Knowles’s life, inseparable from her art.
Lauren Fulton
images courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Art and Lauren Fulton
Knowles experiencing her Bean Garden (1976/2016) with visitors_ Courtesy of the author
Alison Knowles (with George Brecht and Robert Watts), “Blink,” 1963, Screenprint and synthetic polymer paint on canvas, Courtesy the artist and James Fuentes Gallery, New York
Alison Knowles, “Book in a Shirt,” 1995–2013, Ink and collage on paper, mixed media Courtesy the artist and James Fuentes Gallery, New York
Alison Knowles, Hat for a Rainy Day (detail), 1983 Handmade flax paper, beans, and string _ Courtesy of the author
Alison Knowles, The Boat Book, 2014–2015 Courtesy the artist and James Fuentes Gallery, New York Photo: Bryan Conley, Carnegie Museum of Art
