Christopher Stout is a Queer abstract reductivist artist whose work formulates conversations surrounding the notions of radical joy and a vision of Queerness as found in our imaginations. Stout’s works are monochromatic, minimal, and hover between painting and sculpture. His work seeks to provide a portal to envision Queer abstraction as allied with the activist, emancipatory, and groundbreaking responsibilities of the artist/creator to challenge the faceted structural oppressiveness inherent in our hierarchical society.

Stout has shown extensively with Lichtundfire, including multiple group exhibition projects and the solo exhibitions "Come Out 2 Show Them" in April 2017, "Sonic Opera" in May of 2018, and "Standing on the Shoulders of Queer Martyrs and Saints" in October of 2019.

More information to follow.

Lichtundfire was established in 2015, with a visual program emphasizing on nonrepresentational, conceptual, and abstract art; especially minimal, color field, geometrical, straight edge, abstract expressionist painting, lyrical abstraction, and process work. Lichtundfire's gallery director Priska Juschka is originally from Germany, and is known for being part of—and instrumental in—the first NADA (New Art Dealer's Alliance) generation from its inception in the early 2000's. 

By its exhibitions, Lichtundfire's program is dedicated to developing and nurturing an active, engaged, progressive, and emancipated art community that addresses cultural and social realities as expressed through visual arts.

Lichtundfire
175 Rivington Street, (Ground Floor)
New York, New York 10002

Gallery website: www.lichtundfire.com

Image: A studio portrait of Christopher Stout taken by artist Eva Mueller.

Lichtundfire Gallery, 175 Rivington Street, New York, New York 10002
Exhibition Dates: October 02 – November 03, 2019

Lichtundfire is pleased to present “Standing on the Shoulders of Queer Martyrs and Saints,” an exhibition of mixed media paintings by New York based artist Christopher Stout concerning Queer abstraction, and his third solo show at the gallery.

Best known for his abstract minimalism, Stout’s fascination and research into the artists making Queer work in New York during the late 1970’s germinates a new series of paintings that contain an additional dimension of self-actualization.

In the artist’s own words…

“Since the outset of my discovery as an artist, I’ve always felt a fundamentally queer component within my work. At core, it would be impossible to bring the best of my intellect and creativity into my painting without my queerness being also present. They are inextricably linked.

A seeming contradiction to the above sentiment is that my work isn’t experienced as what we’ve come to understand in the art world as 'Queer', and I suppose I’ve always felt a sense of dissonance between the creation process that recurs in my studio, and how my work resonates within the structure of Contemporary art.

In recent years, I’ve become familiar with Queer abstraction, a largely under-represented genre of LGBT art that formed in the 1960’s. More specifically, I’ve discovered a sense of wonderment about the Queer abstraction being made in New York City during the late 1970’s; that brief, albeit utopian era existing both 10 years post-Stonewall and prior to the blight of the AIDS plague.

Much of the work (both visual and performance) during this timeframe imbues the Queer Renaissance energies of hope and liberation, as well as the splendor found in otherness. Through research, I’ve also been reminded that during this time, all genres of artistic expression served as a creative vocabulary for Queer people, by reason that art was an inherent part of Queer culture.

With these ideas in mind, I set about to imagine a group of Queer-labeled paintings that underscore and embody these values. In many ways, I experience these paintings as self-portraits, and  I share them with you with the intention that they will expand the understanding of the inherent possibilities within Queer art, and also provide my Queer artist peers with a broadened understanding of what it could mean for their work to be defined as Queer.”

This exhibition will include an artist talk and catalog release on Sunday, October 26.

Lichtundfire Gallery, 175 Rivington Street, New York, New York 10002
Exhibition Dates: May 11 – June 03, 2018

Lichtundfire is pleased to announce Sonic Opera, an exhibition of new intimate-sized, abstract reductive paintings by New York based artist Christopher Stout.  This marks the second Lichtundfire solo show by the artist, and also his sixth exhibition project with the gallery. Christopher Stout’s first solo exhibition at Lichtundfire was Come Out 2 Show Them in April of 2017.

As a metaphor of the words of Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, the French nobleman and ground-breaking scientist who was guillotined during the French revolution due to his aristocratic background, who stated that, “…nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything transforms,” SONIC OPERA is both an expansion of, and a focused convergence on the work from his previous solo exhibition. Stout forms a vocabulary that is the result – in its original sense of res ultima (lat.) – of a synthesis of the visual disciplines of abstract reductive painting, abstract minimal sculpture and sound art composition.

Alike chords in music, or the floors of a building in architecture, the volume of a generative process of layering of materials provides the dialectic foundation for each work. All these works are serially congruent layered, with the exception of the top shape layer that bifurcates into porcelain circles or a parallelogram. With this approach, Stout, evokes a visual sense of a musical/ operatic monument – reality shrouded inside of a 5-sided plexiglass box. 
In a discourse about the philosophy of sound, the German electronic composer, musical visionary, and theoretician Karlheinz Stockhausen clarified, that “…what is important is neither linearity or non-linearity, but the change, the degree of change from something that doesn't move to other events with different tempos in particular." 

To that end, the artist remains steadfast in a constituency of replication, connection and reconnection, a mandate of restraint, negative space, aerial mapping, and Stout’s own tenet that, “subjective matter may be provided artifice through insertion into an established system.”

Conversely, the installation of these small size paintings hovers aesthetically and philosophically between the reductionist assumption that every thing, and every idea, can be reduced to its more simple and coherent form while emphasizing the imperfections which come with all things created.

ArtHelix, 289 Meserole Street, Brooklyn, New York 11206
Exhibition Dates: April 24 – May 17, 2015

ArtHelix is pleased to present A.O., an exhibition of paintings by Christopher Stout—the artist’s second project with ArtHelix and his first solo at the gallery.

Best known for working with cement and shredded writing, this series marks somewhat of a material departure as many of the works are fashioned from fused plaster cylinders on museum panel.

Stout has said of this work: “A.O. is about the discovery of telling a visual story while not using the entirety of the painting’s surface. To accomplish this, I built structural environments within the works that would allow the dynamic to be carried by the internal lines and negative space. A.O. is about an edifice to prominence.”

Christopher Stout is the Founder of Bushwick Art Crit Group (BACG), Brooklyn NYC’s nonprofit art think tank. BACG is obsessed with understanding Contemporary Art through the lens of the art & artists in Bushwick.

A.O. is on view at ArtHelix April 24th – May 17th, afterwhich works will be shown in a solo presentation at Select Art Fair during NYC Frieze Art Week. This exhibition is curated by Wilson Duggan.

2014 New York Armory Art Week
Fountain Art Fair, 69th Regiment Armory, 68 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York 10010
Exhibition Dates: March 07 – 09, 2014

Arts in Bushwick is pleased to present Linear Anagram, a solo installation project shown during NYC Armory Arts Week, and exploring societal constructs.