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Christopher ColvilleTarget D2016
2016
About the Item
Christopher Colville is an American artist working to push the boundaries of the photographic medium in both experimental and traditional forms. His images are created outdoors by igniting a small portion of gunpowder on the surface of silver gelatin paper. In the resulting explosion, light and energy abrade and burn the surface while simultaneously exposing the light-sensitive silver emulsion. I loosely control the explosion by placing objects I have gathered in the field on the paper’s surface, but the results are often surprising and unpredictable as the explosive energy of gunpowder is the true generative force creating the image. I believe that by working in these ways, the images push the material and symbolic limitations of the medium. They turn the photograph inside out while creating something that is both serendipitous and elemental. The images are the residue of both creation and obliteration, generated from a single spark.
Beyond Reckoning Artist Statement:
Throughout my career, I have harnessed energy, fluid, motion, light and the chaos of volatile reactions. This attempt to reconfigure the photographic medium, has aligned with my interest in the dual nature of creation and destruction. Recently however, my attention has been redirected as I try to comprehend our increasingly divided and violent American culture. Suspended in a state of wonder and dread, my time in the landscape has shifted from a search for transformative experiences to a reckoning with the residue of American volatility.
Beyond Reckoning is the antiphon to a continuous cycle of violence imbedded in American culture, reflecting our polarized population. The images are made with targets I have collected from desert hillsides, abandoned by recreational shooters. The targets include commercially produced bulls-eyes, life size human forms, predators, mannequin heads, and wedding photographs as well as more divisive, crudely drawn political caricatures. These objects are cultural relics of a violent era, reduced to delicate lace by the onslaught of gunfire, revealing complex motives of hero fantasies, fear, frustration and hatred.
In the darkness of night I place the targets on gelatin silver paper and ignite measured portions of gunpowder on their surface. The explosive energy imprints the negative form of the target on the light sensitive paper while fire burns through the voids of bullet holes, scaring and pitting the surface of the print, creating luminous shadows whose clarity refute their violent creation. Forms rise from the flames as mythological apparitions haunting a landscape that holds a compressed history of violence. The targets are consumed in the process of creation but the images generated reveal triumphant revenant forms bearing the wounds of their creation.
This ongoing body of work has grown to include multi panel assailants, whose filmic repetition reference comic book cells, clustered installations of bulls-eye targets along with the human scale silhouettes titled “Citizens.” I have spent the last year and a half scouring the land surrounding my home, gathering objects and orchestrating nighttime interventions. Engulfed in billowing smoke, I sift through debris, repeating and refining small explosions, layering violence upon violence with the hope of finding clarity. The further I dive in to this work the more emotionally fraught it becomes and more determined I am to follow this path into uncharted territories.
- Creator:Christopher Colville (1974, American)
- Creation Year:2016
- Dimensions:Height: 16 in (40.64 cm)Width: 20 in (50.8 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Sante Fe, NM
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU13425264902
Christopher Colville
Christopher Colville is an artist working to push the boundaries of the photographic medium in both experimental and traditional forms. Born in 1974 in Tucson, Arizona, he received his BFA in Anthropology and Photography from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and his MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico. After leaving New Mexico, he returned home to the Sonoran Desert and is currently living in Phoenix. Colville has spent his time in Phoenix exploring the desert where he has taught at multiple institutions including as a visiting Assistant Professor at Arizona State University. Colville’s work has been included in both national and international publications and exhibitions including SCOPE Basel 2015. Recent awards include the Ernst Cabat Award through the Tucson Museum of Art, Critical Mass top 50, the Humble Art Foundations New Photography Grant, an Arizona Commission on the Arts Artist Project Grant, a Public Art Commission from the Phoenix Commission on the Arts and an artist fellowship through the American Scandinavian Foundation. Colville’s work has been reviewed in national and international publications including the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe and GUP Magazine.
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