Power Symbols (Black White Gold Gray + Red), Artist’s Notes:

If we're going to discuss the development of *this* work, we should also contextualize the art within the global economic depression and NYC art market crash of 2009. Ask most any New Yorker about their experience during the downturn and they’ll tell you, and I’m going to tell you… it was bleak.

My 2013 in Bushwick is often nothing short of euphoric; however, in the early spring of 2009, I was all the way down to financial and emotional destitution. I’d long since terminated the lease on my DUMBO studio (in the NYFA warehouse) and put everything in storage in Chelsea. I was barely scraping rent in the West Village by strapping together multiple small projects and borrowing money, gallery sitting at Daneyal Mahmood, and selling other artist’s work on small consulting projects with galleries including Cynthia Reeves Gallery.

And in the midst of this constant present of financial struggle, what was so incredibly helpful, and felt like cord blood, was that I’d weathered living as an artist in San Francisco during the dotcom-fueled major recession. (See my artist notes in the Unbridled! and Coma State bodies of work.)

There’d be the voices in my head… the voice of fear of financial ruin, the voice of fear of not making work, the voice of fear of an unknown outcome, and then in torrent, I’d hear a new voice chant screaming, “Make it here and make it anywhere; make it here and make it anywhere,” and it wasn’t Frank, but the exact voice as Diamanda Galás in the Plague Mass, and who is going to fucking stop anything when Diamanda Galás is coaching you to get … ART i-n-d-i-g-e-n-o-u-s???
And so I walked through the galleries and the museums, and I thought about Louise Bourgeois who started in the West Village dragging found objects back into her apartment, and I thought, “What do I have, what do I have, what is my platform?” And I realized that I had a stovetop in the West Village, and that was MORE than enough, and I would take that stovetop and turn it into a foundation.

I couldn’t make 4-foot squares, but I was going to make 20-inch squares, and find a new method for conveying something that felt powerful and monumental far away, and then delicate and multi-faceted when experienced close-up.

And so I started working with 20”x20” museum panels, gluing stretcher bars to them to make them stockier, covering them with Belgian linen, and then affixing 1.5” brackets to their backs so that they would suspend OUT from the wall and give dramatic shadows… Eventually there were gold ones and black ones and gray ones and white ones, and I had originally thought they would stand as miniatures of future profound-sized pieces like the Calder models, but then they started moving in my mind into formation like soldiers or the diagram of a sentence about reincarnation, and then within those formations, I started to encrypt symbols…religious symbols and other symbols of political and social construct, and this was how I arrived at POWER SYMBOLS.

Themes Explored: Societal Constructs

IMPORTANT FOOTNOTE

I’ve done a myriad of interesting, small exhibition projects using the monochromes from Power Symbols (Black White Gold Gray + Red), including installations at the X-Initiative, Daniel Cooney Gallery, Lyons Wier, Hous Projects Gallery, Envoy Gallery, ClampArt, and most recently at Brooklyn Fire Proof gallery. In addition, I’ve shown this work at Bushwick Open Studios, and I’ve donated pieces at charity auction to support GLAAD, Acria, BGSQD and NUTUREart.

It is IMPORTANT to know that the cannon of this work has been NEVER been visually experienced, ONLY small vignettes, and I would very much like that to show this body of work in New York.

To arrange a studio visit, please e-mail me at cs@christopherstout.com.

Power Symbols (Black White Gold Gray + Red) Installation ONE (1)

Each monochrome is 20"x20"x2" and fashioned from industrial papier-mâché comprised of cement, shredded Wall Street Journals that have been previously written on with charcoal pencil, oil paint, pigment, and other mixed media; and mounted on Belgian linen on board.

This sculpture/painting hybrid is also supported underneath by wire brackets, so that when hung and gallery-lit, the work extends 1.5" from the wall for to allow for higher impacting shadows.

Power Symbols (Black White Gold Gray + Red) Installation TWO (2)

Each monochrome is 20"x20"x2" and fashioned from industrial papier-mâché comprised of cement, shredded Wall Street Journals that have been previously written on with charcoal pencil, oil paint, pigment, and other mixed media; and mounted on Belgian linen on board.

This sculpture/painting hybrid is also supported underneath by wire brackets, so that when hung and gallery-lit, the work extends 1.5" from the wall for to allow for higher impacting shadows.

Power Symbols (Black White Gold Gray + Red) Installation THREE (3)

Each monochrome is 20"x20"x2" and fashioned from industrial papier-mâché comprised of cement, shredded Wall Street Journals that have been previously written on with charcoal pencil, oil paint, pigment, and other mixed media; and mounted on Belgian linen on board.

This sculpture/painting hybrid is also supported underneath by wire brackets, so that when hung and gallery-lit, the work extends 1.5" from the wall for to allow for higher impacting shadows.

Power Symbols (Black White Gold Gray + Red) Installation FOUR (4)

Each monochrome is 20"x20"x2" and fashioned from industrial papier-mâché comprised of cement, shredded Wall Street Journals that have been previously written on with charcoal pencil, oil paint, pigment, and other mixed media; and mounted on Belgian linen on board.

This sculpture/painting hybrid is also supported underneath by wire brackets, so that when hung and gallery-lit, the work extends 1.5" from the wall for to allow for higher impacting shadows.

Power Symbols (Black White Gold Gray + Red) Installation FIVE (5)

Each monochrome is 20"x20"x2" and fashioned from industrial papier-mâché comprised of cement, shredded Wall Street Journals that have been previously written on with charcoal pencil, oil paint, pigment, and other mixed media; and mounted on Belgian linen on board.

This sculpture/painting hybrid is also supported underneath by wire brackets, so that when hung and gallery-lit, the work extends 1.5" from the wall for to allow for higher impacting shadows.