I don't sleep very restfully.

In order to get what constitutes in my world as a good night's sleep, there are several important criteria that have to be met: the room itself needs to be a near sensory-deprivation chamber, completely dark, with no loud noises (white noise is okay). It can't be too hot or too cold. I can't be inordinately anxious or completely stretched thin with deadlines and commitments, else my brain will spin for an hour or two before sleep, working its way through to-do lists, creating new ones, the superego in overdrive because of what it didn't get done but should have, and how I could have done certain things better that day than I did. The event of powering down the mind is complex and does not adhere to any neat or predictable timeline. And for all of that, even when such conditions are met, I wake up far too easily and frequently throughout the night.

Robert Knight knows these fits and knots of complexity well, having embarked on a multimedia project on the subject of sleep. Using a combination of layered photographs, audio and video recordings, he has created portraits of sleepers over time that speak as much about the notion of rest as they do on the sleepers themselves. From his artist's statement on the Sleepless project:

Sleepless examines the contradiction between our expectations about sleep and its nocturnal actuality.

[It] reveals a state of restlessness through the ethereal and translucent bodies which are captured during long-exposure nighttime shots. The resultant images are nighttime narratives—stories of our night's sleep which suggest a contemporary sleep crisis in our society.

Untitled, 4 hours 15 minutes, from the series Sleepless by Robert Knight

Untitled, 6 hours 35 minutes, from the series Sleepless by Robert Knight

These images are not ones of sweet sleep, or depictions that readily describe something specific about each particular sleeper. They successfully accomplish what Knight writes was his goal all along: a story about sleep itself, which is not an account about sublime subconscious reprieve, but rather the fact that in sleep we are often not at rest, not powered-down and not peacefully dreaming. While these images are not what I'd call serene, I take a certain comfort in looking at them and knowing that I'm not alone in my unrest.

If you're in Boston in June and July, you can experience this multi-dimensional and layered study firsthand at the Gallery Kayafas. Images from recent other series of Robert Knight's work (Dwelling and My Boat is So Small) have recently been acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. A complete portfolio of Robert Knight's work can be seen on his website.

SLEEPLESS— An exhibition of recent photographs/audio/video by Robert Knight
June 4 - July 17, 2010

Gallery Kayafas
450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA
Receptions: Friday, June 4, 5:30-7:30 pm & Friday, July 9, 5:30-7:30 pm