Pierre Knop: Le Sacre Du Printemps

Yossi Milo is pleased to present Le Sacre Du Printemps, an exhibition of new paintings by Pierre Knop (b. 1982, Nancy, France). For his third solo exhibition with the gallery, Knop turns his attention entirely to landscapes, deepening his engagement within a practice that has long moved between observation, memory, and invention. “My paintings don’t depict an external reality, but rather an inner one,” he explains. Drawing from photographs, lived experience, and art historical references, Knop develops compositions through an ongoing dialogue between material, gesture, and perception, allowing each painting to arrive at its own internal logic.  

Although partially inspired by the subject matter within his paintings, the title, Le Sacre Du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), is also influenced by Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 composition of the same name. Knop often abstains from using electronics during his time in the studio, instead playing vinyl records from his personal collection, which includes jazz, hip hop, and classical music. The Rite of Spring became a recurring accompaniment as he made these paintings, sometimes playing it multiple times in a single day. Knop was drawn to the composition’s provocative dissonance, and to the way its shifts in energy could establish a mood while he constructed his expansive landscapes.  

One of the most significant changes in this body of work is the absence of figures. Across landscapes comprised of towering mountains, rustling trees, and flowing water, Knop removes the human presence that has often inhabited his paintings. He describes the figure as a sort of “proxy” through which a viewer can enter an image, imagining and ultimately constructing a narrative around what they see. In doing so, he suggests; we tend to “humanize” nature. Here, Knop removes that entry point, allowing the landscape to operate on its own terms. “Landscapes give me the potential to create a visual symphony of appearances through rhythm and texture,” Knop explains. For him, these landscapes are “less about real places and more about states of perception and the duality of fiction and non-fiction,” allowing them to move toward “the exaggerated, the artificial, or the dream-like.”