AGE: 32
BASED IN: New York
The work of Kye Christensen-Knowles is compelling evidence that rumors about the death of figurative painting have been greatly exaggerated. A recent solo exhibition at Lomex in New York showed off the Maine-born painter’s range and skill. In one gallery, a series of contemporary society portraits were by turns unnerving, chilling, and sexy; in another, epic scenes out of a science-fiction fever dream towered overhead. Christensen-Knowles’s work is currently on view in a group show at the closely watched private museum the Warehouse in Dallas.
Describe one work you’ve made that captures who you are as an artist.
Painting, 2019–23. It’s a readymade: the studio rug that abutted my painting wall during four years of production, covered in the accumulated paint that fell from the canvases made in that time. Painting has always held, for me, a trace of swordsmanship; the rug, in this sense, is a kind of fencing piste that captures a tonal truth sought in all of my work—the tragic gall of nonverbal communication, and, above all, painting as rhetoric, as a recording device. It’s a painting made, quite literally, through loss.
Describe your work in three words.
Oh, how thrilling.
What’s an artwork you didn’t make, but wish you had?
Vito Acconci’s Command Performance, 1974, and Louise Bourgeois’s Cell (Arch of Hysteria), 1992–93.
Tell us about a teacher who changed the way you think about art.
Dike Blair comes to mind. What he encouraged in me ran counter to my natural gravitation towards loaded gravitas.
What’s an underrated studio tool you can’t live without?
A Q-tip.
What art-world trend would you like to see die out?
I don’t wish death upon anything.
Is there a studio rule you live by?
Nothing so hard and fast. I don’t paint without gloves though.
Who are the three people, alive or dead, invited to your dream art-world dinner party?
Giacomo Leopardi, Maurice Blanchot, Shinji Mikami.
See CULTURED‘s full 2025 Young Artists list and access other individual artist profiles here.
in your life?
