New Work by Christopher Roberson

"My practice, while rooted in sculpture, finds its genesis in line, or more specifically, the disruption of line. I am interested in line that has been warped, distorted, liquefied, rotated, and abruptly ended. The source drawings for my sculptures are often produced digitally, which makes it possible to see an origin line manipulated in real time. This vulnerability that is applied to the drawings often produces unanticipated results and allows the injection of chance into a process that can be very methodical. Working in a vector environment also gives me the freedom to play with an economy of imagery that can be repeated and scaled infinitely.

In Full Sight/ I Think I’m Gonna Be Sick

The work shown in Cannonball Run 3 at Zeitgeist finds me picking up the scraps of these source drawings and allowing them to stand alone. Mining a lexicon of cartoons, sports, and the suburban landscape, the resulting structures, while abstract in nature, can become familiar and elemental. I feel that this recognition magnifies the irregularities and modifications of material. The subtle contrast between textures like black adhesive vinyl and black vinyl fabric, reinforce these ideas. My intention is to call up associations with youth and exterior/interior domains- aiming to in some way preserve the juvenescent spirit, while acknowledging its fading vitality. 

The series of prints called Wallop developed through a push-and-pull of creating space and then immediately jumbling the imagery. This process was repeated until I felt that the pieces snapped into place and a tense harmony existed between the gestures. Built upon a Peanuts comic, the individual elements were both reduced and camouflaged by the added imagery until the source nearly vanished. By isolating the compositions on a field of black, my hope was to create a sort of gravity and isolation in the drawings. There is a ubiquitous loneliness that I wish to acknowledge in my work."

Wallop Series