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Image caption: a studio image of shredded conceptual writing stating, "The Wonderment of Otherness" which was embedded inside of the paintings in the "Standing on the Shoulders of Queer Martrys and Saints"solo shown at Lichtundfire in 2019. This was Christopher Stout's third solo exhibition at the gallery. |
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Artist Notes: I'm sharing top level information and images on the New York City solo gallery and art fair I've exhibitied 2014 – 2021. At some point, I look forward to expanding into my San Francisco solo projects 2000 – 2006. |
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Lichtundfire Gallery, 175 Rivington Street, New York, New York 10002 Exhibition Dates: TBA Lichtundfire is pleased to announce “Wonderment of Otherness”, a fall 2021 exhibition of mixed media paintings concerning Queer abstraction by New York City artist Christopher Stout. This will be his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. 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. |
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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.” |
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Lichtundfire Gallery, 175 Rivington Street, New York, New York 10002 Exhibition Dates: April 22 – May 26, 2017 Lichtundfire is pleased to announce Come Out 2 Show Them, an exhibition of intimate-sized, abstract minimal paintings by New York-based artist Christopher Stout. This marks the second New York gallery solo show by the artist, and also his second project with the gallery. Christopher Stout was previously included in the group exhibition, Chewing Tar, Industrial Materials in the Service of Art, curated by Linda Griggs. For this exhibition, Christopher Stout has conceived a new series of paintings, constructed from sanded cylindrical and rectangular-shaped plaster molds, and mounted on Belgian linen on board. This body of work conceptualizes visually the ideas and paradigms of the Western Reductivist movement, while at the same time exploring the creative traditions of the acceptance of transience and imperfection as expressed within the Japanese philosophy of Wabi-sabi. Strikingly similar and purist, but not quite perfect nor identical, 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 taking into account, emphasizing, and shedding light on the imperfections which come with all things created. |
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