A collection of paintings with a medieval, folk-inflected stylistic take on modern abstraction, “Everything Counts” presents nearly isolated elements of mostly interior and architectural scenes. Foregrounded single objects and components are rendered by the privileging of their placements as lowkey heroic, despite being reduced to humbler fundamental schematics.

Sophie Lourdes Knight, The West Country (2018), acrylic on canvas, 72 x 52 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Zevitas Marcus.

Knight’s work offers stripped down detail, and built-up process; the way she paints contains a lot more detail, action, and emotion than the pared-down pictorial elements. The way she whittles down her imagery, rather than impoverishing the picture, creates a sense of regality, majesty and mystery. There is an almost tangible sense of scenic narrative like a medieval jousting tournament or a hunting party—red banners with horses, hefty stone walls, pennants and textiles and wide arched gates, ceremonial vases, raised stages.

Sophie Lourdes Knight, Stella’s Pattern (2018), acrylic on canvas, 18 x 22 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Zevitas Marcus.

There aren’t really any people, beyond a few instances of after-images that could be walking legs, and All Nearness Pauses (all works 2018), the lone portrait and thus tempting to view as a self-portrait despite a dearth of evidence. Best in Show has a prancing dog, whereas The West Country has a depiction of a horse, but on a banner. There are a few swords of grass, and in Stella’s Pattern a single tree whose thick-stalked paddle-shaped leafy branches have an eccentric aesthetic that obliquely references architecture as much as nature. But for the most part, these paintings are built rooms and public spaces that await arrivals or have been emptied—which is unclear, but the energy is more expectant than abandoned. Here a lamp or two, there a single thatched chair, two pairs of skis on a snowy expanse—but basically, in Knight’s dissolute world, you are on your own.

Sophie Lourdes Knight, The Arches (2018), acrylic on canvas, 60 x 56 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Zevitas Marcus.

So that really just leaves the paint itself. Like the show title says, everything counts. Knight is a master of ghost marks, swirling layers, brushstroke vestiges, and cognitive pentimenti. Drips, clusters, washes, scratchings, featherings—it’s all there. The Arches is about architecture, The Harlequin’s Vase is a large-scale vessel in ancient brown and black against a luxurious striped textile. Other works also have literal titles. However, decoding the imagery is just a first step in appreciating the work, for that it is required to perform a close-up scan, a proper consideration of surfaces, which only yield their rich rewards of muddied prismatics and telling movement upon intimate inspection.

Sophie Lourdes Knight, “Everything Counts,” November 3 – December 22, 2018, at Zevitas Marcus, 2754 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90034. www.zevitasmarcus.com