Linnea Kniaz paints with expressionistic intensity paired with a refined color palette. Manipulation of formal technique results in pervasive, emotive abstraction. Kniaz controls the context with a variety of modules, juxtaposed next to each other, which consequently cleaves together without conflict. Her painting process is self-referential. After observing and sketching references of her past exploration, she hangs the studies on the wall to loosely observe as she renders a new work.

She works in oil (occasionally other materials such as pencil) on unprimed paper and sometimes primed canvas. Frequently, she uses razors to fuse painting with paper to build up the surface. The cut-off paper edges then sometimes become the non-figurative references from which I make other paintings. Her work acts as a metaphor for the deconstructivist aesthetics. Stripped bare and fragmented, her work does not splinter and lose meaning but rather removes the object from preconceived associations and then imbues it with something new.

Kniaz’s art visually draws a focal comparison between Jacques Derrida’s theory of (con)text and an opposing ideology of personal exploration through abstraction. We should eer in the fact that Arthur Danto was correct in his introduction to Unnatural Wonders, as he claimed that it was, in fact, the artists who had attempted to deal with the deepest concerns of art theory. Kniaz presents a wonderful dichotomy on a single surface.

Born and raised in Chicago, IL, Kniaz lives and works in New York City. In 2010, she received a BA in Studio Art and Art History Summa Cum Laude from Skidmore College Saratoga Springs, NY, where she graduated with departmental honors in both discourses. During her collegiate experience, she studied at Rietveld Art Academie Amsterdam, Netherlands in 2008. She has exhibited in New York and Amsterdam; additionally, two of her works are permanent acquisitions in Skidmore’s collection.