Mark Armijo McKnight: Decreation

Through Jan 5

White clouds against a black background, with one large cloud on the right and a smaller one on the left.

On view
Floor 1, Free Lobby Gallery

Open: Aug 24, 2024–Jan 5, 2025

Mark Armijo McKnight: Decreation features new and recent black-and-white photographs by Mark Armijo McKnight (b. 1984, Los Angeles, California; lives in New York, New York) and focuses on his ongoing body of work, “Decreation.” The concept, originated by the French philosopher, activist, and mystic Simone Weil (1909–1943), describes an intentional undoing of the self, a process Armijo McKnight explores in images of bodies and landscapes in intermediate states, such as anonymous nude figures engaged in erotic play amidst harsh environments. These photographs convey a sense of both ecstasy and affliction. A new 16mm film in the gallery plays a cacophonous symphony of gradually unwinding metronomes set within the dramatic geological formations of the Bisti Badlands/De-Na-Zin Wilderness in New Mexico. Two large limestone sculptures, which double as seating, suggest the forms of a pair of ancient sundials. As a whole, Decreation simultaneously evokes tumult and quietude, darkness and light, isolation and togetherness.

This exhibition is on view in the Lobby gallery, accessible to the public free of charge as part of the Whitney Museum’s enduring commitment to supporting and showcasing emerging artists’ most recent work.

Mark Armijo McKnight: Decreation is organized by Drew Sawyer, Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography, with Nakai Falcón, Curatorial Assistant.

Generous support for Mark Armijo McKnight: Decreation is provided by the John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation.

Additional support is provided by David and Carol Aronowitz, David Dechman and Michel Mercure, Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, and Graham Steele.

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A black and white image of a metronome with its pendulum in motion, showing tempo markings on the front scale.

Inspired by the Hungarian composer György Ligeti’s Poème symphonique (1962), a composition for one hundred metronomes, this film features dozens of the mechanical devices set amid the dramatic geological formations of the Bisti Badlands/De-Na-Zin Wilderness in New Mexico, Armijo McKnight’s maternal homeland. The metronomes which make repeated clicking sounds at different tempos, evoke a choir or a chattering crowd of competing voices or ideologies. As the devices slowly wind down, the film descends sonically into the stillness of the majestic landscape, suggesting ecological precariousness, the transience of human existence, or the contradictory demands of speech and silence.

Armijo McKnight often cites as an influence the French philosopher Simone Weil, who believed that the onerous act of eclipsing one’s own ego—becoming silent—allows for a more attentive and compassionate way of being in the world. She wrote: “If only I could see a landscape as it is when I am not there. But when I am in any place I disturb the silence of heaven by the beating of my heart.”

Events

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Thurs,
Oct 24

Mark Armijo McKnight in Conversation with Garth Greenwell

6:30 pm

Audio

As a queer, brown adolescent on the conservative periphery of Los Angeles, Mark Armijo McKnight grew up making and trading mixtapes by mail. Music is both an inspiration to the artist's practice and a regular supplemental component of his exhibitions. In 2020, he published a mixtape alongside his first monograph, Heaven is a Prison. His commission at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson was similarly accompanied by a mixtape, The Debris of an Unknown Celebration. For Decreation, Armijo McKnight produced a digital mixtape that includes music that either inspired or speaks to the existential themes present in his exhibition: death, landscape, light, dark, time, beauty, sun, and sky.