The Two Lives of Christopher Russell
Christopher Russell’s art lives in two separate worlds.
The first is familiar. It’s an ordinary world defined by careful composition, the rule of thirds. Here we encounter nature’s beauty.
Rays of sunshine perforate a forested landscape, setting the canopy ablaze. Green hills ripple and undulate, verdant wrinkles in a vast rug. A faint reflection of the sky pierces the depths of a pool of water, leaving behind only a trace of the clouds overhead.
These are scenes of tangible beauty. They’re stunning but ordinary.
The second life is ethereal. It’s a world of ghosts. A place where meaning cannot be articulated, only felt.
It’s a world of the unknown and yet, it’s a place that we’ve all visited, if only for a moment. This is where your subconscious dwells, where all your forgotten reside. It’s scary, full of mystery and uncertainty. Yet, it’s still beautiful.
Only here can perfection be achieved.
In this world, we find scenes more breathtaking than any of the Turner’s landscapes, images more authentic than any of Adam’s photographs. It is a world that defies interpretation and therefore remains untainted by categorization.
It simply exists.
Russell is able to unite these world’s using his unique process. He captures the first through photography, carefully planning compositions, crafting scenes of natural beauty.
He attains the second through destruction.
First, the artist covers his compositions in sheets of colored fabric, rendering them all opaque and some practically unreadable. Then, he etches delicate patterns onto their surfaces, creating fields of lace that twist and tangle together. The overall result is not an image but an aura.
Christoper Russell’s The Ghost of Mechanical Reproduction is on view through November 19th at the David B. Smith Gallery in downtown Denver. There, his work is complimented by the gallery’s white walls and open space. It’s the perfect atmosphere to view Russell’s work, a blank page.
