We're All Equally Unimportant

PastExhibition

Nov 17

Keith Rocka Knittel
We’re All Equally Unimportant

December 16, 2017 - January 13, 2018

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition We’re All Equally Unimportant by Keith Rocka Knittel featuring new paintings, drawings, and sculpture on view December 16, 2017 through January 13, 2018. An opening reception and the second annual Keith Rocka Knittel’s Everything Must Go! Holiday Bazaar will take place on Saturday, December 16, from 6-9PM.

In the main gallery viewers are greeted by a large drawing of a cat sitting happily in front of a mouse hole accompanied by the phrase “We’re all equally unimportant!” a play on zen proverbs, at once humbling and liberating. This drawing is reproduced and screen printed on twenty-six panels fabricated from stretched fragments of used drop cloths and clustered, along with plaster sculptures of mouse holes, throughout the gallery.

Rocka Knittel has modified the passageway from the main gallery to a second, smaller gallery from a traditional doorway into a large mouse hole – a physical threshold directly referencing the drawing, paintings and sculptures. Beyond the mouse hole are shadowy versions of the works in the main gallery, akin to finding dirty insulation, electrical conduit and a contractor’s forgotten trash hiding inside the wall of a house.

Keith Rocka Knittel’s Everything Must Go! Holiday Bazaar

In the main gallery during the opening reception, invited artists Michael Decker, Chris Hanke, Sarah Manuwal, Alli Miller, Carl Pomposelli, Molly Shea, and Lena Wolek along with Keith Rocka Knittel will be selling art objects at a holiday bazaar. Additionally, cocktails will be served by bar-fund and holiday pies and treats by Northern Organics will be for sale. For the duration of the show, Rocka Knittel will present a installation of works by participating Bazaar artists and Max Maslansky and Dylan Palmer in the downstairs gallery, echoing a church basement after the bazaar has ended but before the janitor cleans up.

Keith Rocka Knittel holds an MFA from CalArts and has exhibited work in contemporary art spaces including the Hammer Museum, the Telfair Museum, Charlie James Gallery, and Otras Obras. Rocka Knittel is the founder and acting director of otherplaces.la and the Other Places art fair (OPaf) and oversees the project spaces Yard Pedro and Harborview & Pole. Rocka Knittel’s Everything Must Go! radio show on KCHUNG is now entering its fifth year on the air. Keith Rocka Knittel lives and works in San Pedro, California where he attempts to break down the linear preconceptions of time and space.