Kris Chatterson, Blue Copper, 2011
60 x 66 inches
February 19 – March 26, 2011
Western Project is proud to present the second solo exhibition of paintings by Kris Chatterson. Living and working in New York, the artist has created a body of work using printing, painting, digital imaging and iPhone drawings. Clipping and selecting gestures from previous prints, drawings and paintings, Chatterson excavates his past; a kind of digital surgery and recombination process. He presents the natural calligraphic gesture as synthetic, abstract elements; transforming the physical object-ness of the mark into non linear spatial compositions. The results are a kind of futuristic weather; informed by static patterns – both visual and audio; and enhanced by iPhone drawings as familiar yet displaced marks. Chatterson’s images seem to map immense territories or conversely, unseen microcosms. They reference his interest in fractals; beginning with his approach of building the images from a matrix to find unlimited possible combinations of forms. But akin to Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein and Warhol, Chatterson uses repetition, and a lo-fi printing to construct his paintings. The messy production of his printing and rubbing contrast with his high tech realms; visually reminiscent of Stella’s work from the mid 1980′s, or the haunting emotional tones of Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The paintings provide a mirror of the world of destruction and creation we are all a part of; as formal inventions they evidence the short distinctions between the physical and the abstract world of phenomena – the difference, being merely language and concept.