Cris paints the human figure or rather signs of its (im)mediate presence / absence.
He is increasingly attracted by the depiction of missing centers, of inner chambers, the manifestation of an absence. The representational pull is a heritage of his architectural background. Realist description serves narratives of Surrealism re-contextualization, re-associations and re-shuffling of parts. The images are about a 'fresh-eyes' look on persistent obsessions. A way of dealing with today's deluge of cliches is de-constructing, de-recognizing, working back on the mechanisms of perception (Francis Bacon's 'figural'). To mediate a mechanistic representation, to distance from the narrative-descriptive, layers of pictorial matter are called upon: fluid mediums, watercolor, inks, pastels, collated found prints. The images build up through cycles of partial cancellations-reaffirmations of the intentional, subjective, precise drawing with tides of randomly applied, accident induced color. These successions aim to create a depth in terms of moods, to account for the passage of time, to dismiss the conventional linear perspective (which sometimes is played upon). The background, the matter-texture, comes forward and drowns the main subject, displaces the story, cuts the narrative impulse. Memory is an essential trigger: one is what one remembers, recognizes. A further liberation from the immediate description is painting what one knows, an accumulation act of seeing, a 'Cubism' of remembering of sorts. Personal photographs are often used as a source or even directly collated; photographs allow a distance from that 'real', 'dead' past. They are part of the memory syntax, continuously re-assumed, re-cognized, re-discovered, re-cycled. One remembers the photograph rather than that actual captured moment. The photograph is simulacrum: the copy becomes a new source, a point of entry for an experience in the present time. |