John Knecht: DELUGE (2010) and ANIMA (2011)

January 1, 2012 - February 29, 2012

Urban Video Project
Projected onto North Façade of Everson Museum of Art Building
Dusk – 11.00pm, Thursday–Sunday

Animator and video artist, John Knecht’s work is hand drawn, first with pencil on paper and then in Photoshop, focused on his admiration for the essential. DELUGE and ANIMA are made frame by frame, reflecting the artist’s love of painting and the ability of the motion picture to sneak up on you. Knecht provides, in his words, “a modernist outlook at a postmodern apocalypse.”

Urban Video Project (UVP) is a multimedia public art initiative of Light Work and Syracuse University in collaboration with Everson Museum of Art. The project operates electronic exhibition sites along the Connective Corridor in Syracuse, NY at Syracuse Stage and the Everson Museum of Art. 

John Knecht: Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel

January 28, 2012 - March 4, 2012

John Knecht is the featured artist for the Urban Video Project in January and February. In conjunction with the exhibition of Deluge and Anima on the Everson’s north façade, a series of Knecht’s animations, called Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel, will be on view inside the Museum. The Fragments, individual animations displayed on monitors, provide a glimpse into the artist’s brilliant imagination, where fantasy collides with vivid colors and quirky sounds. Knecht begins with detailed pencil and gouache drawings of dreamlike images and symbols that only exist in Knecht’s imagined world. The images are then scanned into an electronic format where they can be altered, manipulated, and combined to create dynamic, stop-motion animations. Five original drawings will also be on view in the exhibition. Fragments is largely autobiographical, informed by Knecht’s childhood memories of his Midwestern hometown where he attended elementary school in a church basement. Biblical references can be found throughout Knecht’s animations, in this case, a fascination with the prophet Ezekiel and visions of wheels of fire. Knecht states, "Fragments from the Wheels of Ezekiel is a metaphor for the space where there's no logic—anything goes, there are no rules in that atmosphere.”

John Knecht is the Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of Art & Art History and Film & Media Studies at Colgate University. After 30 years of teaching, he will retire in May, 2012.