Rosalie Knox

Chart is pleased to present our fifth Projection exhibition, 2/2/22: Dearly Beloved, a two-venue presentation with Melanie Flood Projects in Portland, OR, of new abstract paintings by Rosalie Knox.

For her exhibition at Chart, the artist will show a group of paintings that have evolved from her earliest exhibitions where she constructed social events as art happenings. When she was a student in New York, Knox began exploring the profound effects of consumer culture on contemporary art, creating exhibitions outside of the traditional gallery system. She designed and constructed physical spaces where social interaction mirrored the everyday, including painting people's nails while working at the storied gallery, American Fine Arts Co. This experiential “performance/installation” would catch the interest of fellow artist, Tom Sachs. Sachs, whose art also explores American culture and society, invited Knox to create a nail salon for his solo installation hosted by the Morris Healy Gallery at the fabled 1996 Gramercy International Art Fair at The Gramercy Hotel.

In what would become a conduit for her using social engagement as art, Knox designed a portable nail salon for weekly engagements at Suite 303 at the Chelsea Hotel and black light nail painting performances at the legendary Pyramid Club, assuming the role of manicurist. As part of 2/2/22: Dearly Beloved, Knox will install the salon at Chart and host performances that will be announced on the gallery’s Instagram page.

Beyond the pure pleasure of painting fingernails, Knox recounted that “Nail tech is an acceptable career for women that involves painting.” It was at this moment in her artistic development when she began a studio practice to make paintings that experimented with nail polish as a medium. By adding resins, acrylics, enamels, reflective particles, pigments, and polyurethanes, she adopted a style much like Jackson Pollock’s “drip technique” and started to pour, drip, and move the materials across linen that she dyed and stretched herself. She “marinates” color by embracing the canvas—tilting and swaying—to build up spectrums of color effects like sunlight refracted through a prism. Under UV light, the jewel tones—ruby, sapphire, emerald, topaz, pearl—transform into bursts of galactic iridescence. “Working with nail polish was a sublimation of my urge to paint.”

2/2/22: Dearly Beloved is part of a two-venue presentation in collaboration with Melanie Flood Projects in Portland, OR, where Conversation with the Last Unicorn will open on February 18th and be on view through March 12th.

Rosalie Knox is a multimedia artist who lives and works in New York’s East Village. In the early 1990s she studied art and design at the Gerritt Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam before returning to New York where she received her BFA at The Cooper Union in 1995.