Chris Christion
Multi Media
Working in different mediums:
Portal Face Mask
2017 - present
Video and Mixed Media
Dimensions Variable
Mask Installation Images
Champion Ship
2019
Mixed Media
Champion Ship Installation
Some notes about the making of the work:
1
In a not-so-subtle alluding to the legacy of slavery in the power dynamics of sports Championship places a formation of small toy athletic figurines on a gold model cargo ship. The work was inspired by the NFL's response to Colin Kaepernick’s protests of police violence against black lives in 2016-2017 as well as the subsequent response to athlete’s protests during the Black Lives Matter Movement of 2020.
Championship combines a found object ( a model cargo ship) with a vintage Electronic Football game (circa 1960). Detailed, plastic players on bases, are placed on the field in formations, just as in real football. A switch attached to a motion sensor is activated that turns on an electric-powered counterbalanced motor causing the field to vibrate and the players to move around the field. When a viewer(s) motion activates the motor the players spin and crashes into one another repeatedly until their motion stops.
Champion Ship Installation Images
Votive Series
2017
Video and Mixed Media
What is the Votive Series about?
The Votives Series consists of a series of multimedia objects combining sculpture, video, and site-specificity. They consist of different objects that hold visual or audio clips exploring intersecting concepts of inherited racial and social constructs including but not limited to the masquerading of masculinity and the methodically crafted theology of hierarchal worship.
Peep Game 2017 19” x 12.5” x 10” Wood, two-way mirror, video
Reliquary #2 2017 13.75” x 12” x 3.5” Wood, video
Reliquary #2 2017 13.75” x 12” x 3.5” Wood, video
My Key Interest:
I was interested in Reliquaries (a container for holy relics). Reconsidering the future of cultural preservation in light of a long history of cultural exclusion. With that thought in mind, I approached perseveration of cultural perspective and history by thinking about objects as holders of a varied range of black cultural mythic and poetic resources including trauma, dreams, life experiences, memory.
Your Pigmentation Ain't Shit
2014
Shoe polish on panel, speaker with audio
A minimalist square made with shoes polished layered on a panel. The panel also has a speaker which plays audio snippets from a viral video of a passenger on a subway train angered by another passenger. At timed intervals, the painting blurts out a composition of the woman’s angered responses to her perceived dismissal throughout the gallery space. The target of the painting's anger is unclear; seemingly yelling at the viewer, the gallery space, as well as the artwork it shares space with.
Your Pigmentation Ain't Shit 2014 Shoe polish, plexi, motion sensor and audio clip
Your Pigmentation Ain't Shit 2014 Shoe polish, plexi, motion sensor and audio clip
Your Pigmentation Ain't Shit 2014 Shoe polish, plexi, motion sensor and audio clip
For Audio from Your Pigmentation Ain't Shit, 2014:
Click Here
Some Key References for
Your Pigmentation Ain't Shit:
Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915) is often credited with being among the first abstract works ever painted. In 2015 the State Tretyakov Museum in Moscow announced they found a caption-like text on the face of Kasmir Malevich Black Square painting that is believed to read, “Battle of the Negroes in a dark cave” it’s speculated to be in reference to a racist joke in a monochrome painting by Alphonse Allais, a French writer, humorist and cartoonist popular in Russia at the time Malevich made the work. In 1882, Allais’ “Battle of negroes in a deep dark cave at night”. My interest in alluding to this history is to highlight an inherited social perspective on race relations that the conceptual and foundational history of abstraction is built on.
Alphonse Allais, from Album primo-avrilesque, 1897, image: wikipedia
A visitor looks at Malevich’s ‘Black Square’ at Tate Modern (Micha Theiner)
Kasimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915 version 79.5×79.5cm, collection: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moskow
A scene from the 2000 Jackson Pollock biopic in which the artist demonstrates his famous technique of dribbling paint over pure and untouched canvases plays on one side of a freestanding confessional juxtaposed on the other side with a film clip depicting a mans physical and mental domination of an alleged adolescent the viewer is directed to witness the actions of both males as red geometric shapes remove the receiver of their actions from consideration. Referencing religious kneelers used for confessionals the sculpture directs the viewer to assume a physical position of submission /contrition while witnessing the actions of the male protagonist.
