John Knight’s current show at Greene Naftali is mostly strong, with some minor exceptions. The video and projection works on view are presented as one unnamed curation. One new piece, described by the press release as indicative of his interest in “Disclosure,” is a series of slides. Each is a dated diary entry in white on a black ground. They recount the artist working on a new lithograph project, but the narrative is told with suggestions of mystery, intrigue, and furtiveness. He suspects the people around him of plotting a large event (the production of a print) as if they were underground rebels or terrorists. He is ambivalent about his own commitment to their cause, and his samizdat notes indicate a desire to inform on them, or to escape. The portrayal may be especially well timed, following on the heels of Trevor Paglen’s documentation of the NSA, which closed in October at nearby Metro Pictures, and with increasingly loud demands from a vocal minority in the US and Europe, demanding more surveillance of neighbors suspected of jihadist sympathies. Knight points to the blind spot nature of paranoia and the heightened anxiety it produces about even mundane interactions. NOAH DILLON
November 11, 2015 to January 8, 2016 at Greene Naftali Gallery, 508 West 26th Street, Ground Floor, between 10th and 11th avenues.