Artist Bio
Chris Victor was born outside of Denver, Colorado. He earned his BFA in painting from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Victor has been included in various exhibitions including the “Ellarslie Open” at the Trenton City Museum in Trenton, New Jersey, in which he received the Excalibur Award for Excellence. He is currently living and working in the New York’s Hudson Valley.
Artist Statement
Through reductive and sometimes reconstructive processes I search for the source and integrity of the objects I’m working with.
I’m looking to experience the essence of these things around me not in a conceptual or intellectual sense but in an emotive and energetic one.
By silencing the loud shout of utility, of purpose, from the objects I can hear the quieter voices in them, those voices that can’t be heard otherwise.
In the reductive process I allow the structural relationships to remain intact relative to one another, while bringing them into sharper focus by removing excess.
As material is taken away the object weakens physically while its’ presence and spirit shifts and becomes stronger, clearer, and more visible.
I get closer to touching the core of it, the part that if it were removed, the object would no longer be.
In the reconstructive process I use the leftover parts from the reductive piece to rebuild the object. I engage in and reveal the awkward effort of finding the object again, of remaking it without its’ primary structural elements.
Physically this is a futile effort; the piece ends up fragile and imperfect. Spiritually and emotionally, it’s reborn. The object is pieced back together not to regain its lost integrity but to find a new one.
In each of these processes my excitement comes from approaching that line of transformation, that death of the object, going over it and back again from new directions each time deepening my appreciation and wonder at what it is to exist.
Photography: Juris Mardwig