Chris Victor

 

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My work explores this shows theme through the moment to moment nuances of my studio practice. Human notions of vanity, idolatry and identity arise through the controlling mind, primarily rooted in insecurity and fear. My response to my own fear and the desire to control in my art involves nurturing movement and change in my making and thinking processes while working. This is my attempt to avoid the pitfall of an artist’s identity becoming overly tied to the formal aspects of their work. I see this buffer as essential to making my art, much like the importance of a parent keeping their own identity appropriately buffered from that of their children, as to protect the child’s own individual development.  In this work I approached each moment in the studio as a new opportunity for exploration and discovery, allowing the improvised making processes to develop, morph and meander into their own cobbled, celebratory dance.

 

With an exuberance for found material and ad-hoc working processes, Chris Victor’s art is driven by a pervasive spirit of invention, curiosity, and improvisation. His pieces include abstract, mixed media wall works, reductive sculptures, and kinetic contraptions inspired by childhood dreams. Like work by Tim Hawkinson, Richard Tuttle and Robert Rauschenberg, Chris’s work, with it’s playful and inventive spontaneity, expresses a fresh exploratory spirit.

Studying under Stanley Whitney, Dona Nelson and Richard Cramer at the Tyler School of Art, Chris received his undergraduate degree in Painting in 1995. After living and working in New York City for 15 years, Chris settled with his family in the Mid-Hudson Valley in 2001 where he currently lives and works.  Chris’s work has been included in shows at venues such as The Samuel Dorsky Museum, The Grand Rapids Public Museum and the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie.  Chris has been a resident at the Wassaic Project artist residency and was awarded a NYFA Fellowship for Sculpture in 2014.