CHRISTOPHER RUSSELL - artist
Ghost Ship Wreck, 2012 / Epson Ultrachrome HDR Print scratched with a razor / 40 x 60 inches Permanent Collection Contemporary Museum of Art San Diego
Dealing less with the supernatural than the psychosomatic, Christopher Russell rouses ghosts. Within his scratched photographs, fractured glass panes, and hazy metallic paints, there are haunting recollections - the kind of outlier memories that plague our psyche well after childhood. Through a purposefully repressive fog, we habitually revisit the monsters of our innermost mentality, and find ourselves the protagonist of a lifelong plight - a cinematic tale evocatively illustrated by Russell's eerie ships and spectral trees. Like a folkloric odyssey into a cognitive web, his mixed-media works and installations traipse through places of fragility and wistfulness; evidence of the divine and unsettling encounters inherent to our complex mortality.
Untitled (5 pieces, as installed at Hammer Museum), 2009 / Epson Ultrachrome Print scratched with razor, dirt / Each image 24 x 36 inches
Private Collections