Karla Knight

Universal Remote Study 5, 2022
Flashe, colored pencil and graphite on paper
15 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches (39.37 x 27.94 cm)

Courtesy of Karla Knight and Andrew Edlin Gallery

Selected by The Drawing Center

Over the past four decades, Karla Knight (b. 1958, New York) has executed her idiosyncratic visions of UFO related imagery with the persistence of an artist unbeholden to the dictates of art world trends, although contemporary interest in spiritualist art has certainly offered a favorable context. Knight’s relationship with what might be broadly termed “the occult” is rooted in her upbringing; her father authored publications on, among other subjects, UFOs and ghosts, and her grandfather, also a writer, penned a book about afterlife communication.

Knight’s work consists of imaginary language, objects, diagrams, and symbols. It forms a pictorial language of symbols and writing whose underlying system is not known. Simultaneously ancient and futuristic, the work creates an alternative culture which plays with the mystery of life, and what lies hidden underneath.

Karla Knight’s work has been widely shown, most recently at Once Within a Time, 12th International at SITE Santa Fe, curated by Cecilia Alemani (2025-26), and Transe at Gomide & Co., São Paulo. Her solo exhibition, Navigator, at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield, CT) in 2021-22 was accompanied by a monograph written by Amy Smith-Stewart, and a second edition was published in 2023 with an essay by Cassie Packard.

Her art is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis). She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, among them, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo Corporation, and two Connecticut Artist Fellowships.