The Bell Gallery presents a solo-exhibition of Annabel Daou, a Lebanese-born and New York-based artist. Entitled KNOT, the three-part exhibition consists of twelve notebooks with a continuously drawn line that are laid out on a table much like a map; a site-specific wall drawing that transcribes the lines of the notebooks into the gallery space; and a twelve-fold accordian brochure that charts the notebook drawings into a single line. The title KNOT alludes to an inherent reversibility between the text and image, reading and seeing, reflection and experience, creation and interpretation.

The project is a collaboration between the artist and the writer David Markus, in which twelve words chosen by Markus — aporia sacrifice muse island place game object trauma donimation distance that — serve as guidelines for Daou's visual exploration of linguistic meaning.

The twelve words were given to the artist over the period of one year, one at a time, and after each book was completed. Each word functioned as a title and inspirational force for the notebooks, engaging a particular word in a visual way. In this way, the series of notebooks represents the artist's visual diary that records the time passed and her experience of the twelve months during the project.

When finished, the notebooks were given to Markus, who wrote an extended line in response. Daou's drawn line and Markus' written line were printed on reverse pages of the accordion brochure, which in turn served as a map for creating an unbroken, annotated line on the gallery walls. Like the Arabic writing native to Daou that reads from right to left, her drawing starts on the right wall and progresses left around the gallery space, thus reiteration the reversibility of reading and seeing, knowing and experiencing.

Much like in her other work — American, book of hous, aporia, and this is not that — where she explores the ideas of time passing, repetition, impermanence, and perseverance, here too, Daou sets out to quesion direct perception and conceptualization of art. By creating and erasing lines, she searches for the essence of things, for something that is not what it seems to be, for something that IS by what it is NOT, for something that is close to nothing.

Annabel Daou was born and raised in Beirut. In 1999, she moved to New York where she presently lives and works. Daou's recent solo exhibitions include sex & politics at Conduit Gallery, Dallas; book of hours at Gallery Joe, Philadelphia; and America at Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York. She has been included in numerous group exhibitions, such as Democracy In America, a Creative Time project at the Park Avenue Armory, New York; Text Messages at the Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York; and Indexical Frontiers at the University of WIsconsin-Milwaukee. As a founding member of the dB foundation, "dedicated to creating and fostering imaginary edifices," she has co-curated several exhibitions, including Aporia at EFA Gallery, New York; aporia: aporia at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE); and disarmory at the New York Armory Show in 2008.