Chris Fraser
Wednesday, 23 October 2013
Work from In Passing.
“…”In Passing is the most ambitious project I’ve ever worked on, it’s the most ambitious project the artist has ever attempted, and it is, I hope, one of the most successful projects ever executed at Disjecta,” reflects Curator-‐in-‐Residence Josephine Zarkovich. “Chris is so deserving of the opportunity to exhibit internationally—it’s wonderful to see him go from the show at Disjecta to Venice.”
Chris Fraser’s work isolates and brings attention to the miraculous and mysterious qualities of light as it moves through architecture—powerful forces that usually go unnoticed in a space. His site‐specific, large‐scale structures act as modified camera obscuras, producing room‐sized abstract canvases painted with refracted streaks of light.
Born of careful study and meticulous experimentation, Fraser’s work takes the viewer to a moment of the sublime, where the way in which the eye perceives light is manipulated to dramatic effect. At his core, Fraser is not a sculptor as much as he is a photographer—he uses his understanding of color theory and optics to control what the viewer sees and, as Erica Levin writes of his work, “…remake(s) our relationship to the camera, and to the everyday production of images.”
Regarding In Passing, Fraser notes: “Disjecta presented me with the rare opportunity to work spontaneously and without limitation. I was given the resources, both in terms of material and labor, to pursue a project on a grand scale. My only obligation was to honor the scale of the gallery. The show developed out of a project I had shelved a couple years ago for lack of space. But it alone was not enough to fill Disjecta. At a certain point, I was forced to entertain each wild idea. In this way, I built a show that was as much a surprise for me as I hope it is for the visitors.”…” – Disjecta