The Whitney Museum presents the first museum exhibition of American photographer Mark Armijo McKnight, plunging into desolate landscapes where the human body, desire and mysticism converge.

Mark Armijo McKnight has made a name for himself with black-and-white images of nude bodies and landscapes that draw on a long history of photography in the American West. The Los Angeles-born, New York-based artist has exhibited his work in several galleries, but this is the first time his work has been shown in a museum. The Whitney Museum of American Art presents "Decreation", a series of large-format silver prints on which he has been working since 2018. The exhibition title refers to the mystical philosophical concept of Simone Weil (1909-1943), whose theories describe an act of self-effacement to open up and connect to a divine power.

METAPHYSICAL REFLECTIONS

Mark Armijo McKnight explores this thought process in images of bodies and landscapes, immersed in intermediate states. Nude figures embracing each other engage in an approach to erotic games, questioning art history, ancient mythology, social philosophy, embodiment and time.
The 40-year-old artist superimposes metaphors onto his photographs, exploring the different tensions between his subjects and his technical choices, which amplify contrasts and chiaroscuro. All these otherworldly settings were shot in the California desert, where he grew up, and the badlands of New Mexico (otherwise known as Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness), his maternal homeland.
" His dramatic terrain has often been used to symbolize sublime beauty and an ideal of freedom from society, even as his imagery has been exploited for violently oppressive purposes," explains curator and photography curator Drew Sawyer.

BETWEEN POETRY AND ABSTRACTION

Mark Armijo McKnight's images show the formal precision associated with modernism, in the tradition of avant-garde artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe, who made the landscape a fertile ground for abstraction. Caught in their contradictions, they evoke "tumult and quietude, darkness and light, isolation and conviviality".
The photographs are accompanied by a 16mm film featuring György Ligeti's Poème symphonique (1962), a composition for one hundred metronomes. These moving images represent the heart of his exhibition, where sound sets the tempo throughout the space. Two limestone sculptures in the shape of ancient sundials, which can be used as seats, add to the ensemble.
" The unprecedented ecological and socio-political upheavals of our time have profoundly impacted my psyche and consequently my practice," explains Mark Armijo McKnight in the museum's press release. "I feel a sense of urgency to make and share this work because it is, in its own way, both a reflection of and a response to the tumultuous world we find ourselves in... and I also hope a place to find catharsis or solace."

" MARK ARMIJO MCKNIGHT: DECREATION"
99 GANSEVOORT STREET, NEW YORK (USA)
UNTIL JANUARY 12, 2025
WHITNEY.ORG