{"id":32443,"date":"2017-03-10T12:53:03","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T17:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/?p=32443"},"modified":"2017-11-11T14:18:50","modified_gmt":"2017-11-11T19:18:50","slug":"chris-watts-charlotte-north-carolina-a-few-pix-from-his-brooklyn-studio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/the-bomb\/2017\/03\/10\/chris-watts-charlotte-north-carolina-a-few-pix-from-his-brooklyn-studio\/","title":{"rendered":"~CHRIS WATTS . . . CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA \/ & . . . a few pix from his Brooklyn studio"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHRIS WATTS . .. has a solo show in Charlotte, NC at GALLERY TWENTY-TWO – opening tomorrow night.<\/strong><\/p>\n

CHRIS WATTS: ‘Blahk on Blahk on Blak’
\nOPENING RECEPTION: SAT MARCH 11, 2017
\nthe show runs thru APRIL 8, 2017
\nGALLERY TWENTY-TWO<\/a>. CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA<\/p>\n

here are a couple of early install shots:<\/p>\n

\"Chris-watts,-painting-1\"<\/a>
\nthe stretched base fabric is sheer, silk. or a polymer blend.
\nthose are – the wooden stretcher bars, you see behind the surface.<\/p>\n

\"Chris-watts---gallery-twenty-two\"<\/a>
\nthat painting is quite large, it’s interesting to note the . . matte ? Black ? . . dull metallic walls, as in \/ not shiny.
\nchrome-like, if chrome – was ever painted black.<\/p>\n

\"Chris-watts,-North-carolina-\"<\/a>
\nall the better . . to play – off.<\/p>\n

ALL INSTALL IMAGES: COURTESY of the artist<\/p>\n

I finally got to visit Chris Watts . . .
\nin his Greenpoint painting studio – a few weeks ago, just as the work was getting ready for this show.<\/p>\n

\"Chris-watts--studio-#-1\"<\/a>
\nthere’s that large painting – on some kind of sheer nylon, or silk.<\/p>\n

\"Chris-watts-#3\"<\/a>
\nthis is a shot of the painting’s top center, an empty space. at rest for . . this moment.
\ntransparency is – like . . . a full-on color for Chris.
\nso is . . .
\nviolence. the red is for spilt blood, he told me.
\nesp that of a black man dying before your eyes, real time – on the car seat, shot by a cop.
\nphotographed by a dear one.
\nstreaming live on Facebook.
\nit’s shocking.
\nblahk on blahk: stands for . . hard times.<\/p>\n

well, this is not Turner’s landscape.
\nit is more internal.
\nit is introspection, thought. given voice thru brushwork.
\nit is the Zen \/ about targeted race violence, the social storms that still blow cold & harsh.
\na harsh colonial legacy – that’s hard to untwist \/ a fragile social fabric twisting us all<\/em> this way and that.
\nin ways that aren’t always so obvious, but that still call out – if you listen. <\/p>\n

\"Chris-watts-studio-#-4\"<\/a>
\nChris was working on a smaller piece for the show, while he was talking to me.
\nI would say his work is equal parts driven by thought and rage, history and sadness, identity \/ as it is as much by painterly<\/em> concerns: surface, or lack of \/ colored primary pigment – or lack of.
\nsheer texture vs. conventional opaque background.
\ngestural expression vs. a graphic or pictorial narrative. it’s not that it’s even fictional, as much as an emotional space. stormy.
\ntension, shimmery, metallic, dull, matte, shiny. flat, velvet, silk, brushstroke, fade, shades of ‘chrome’.
\nshades of darkness. shades of ancestors, shades of ghosts.
\nthe different background fabrics \/ the fragile social fabric of our ‘background’.
\nthe metaphors are there, they don’t have to be, but there they are.<\/p>\n

flimsy. like the same communal social fabric, we all trample on – usually without much thought.
\nas if it were: banal. <\/p>\n

\"Chris-watts-studio-#-5\"<\/a>
\ncoppery.
\ncopper fabric, is so strange, isn’t it ? – seen out of its usual fashion \/ context.
\nBlhak on Blahk, is so strange – how I hear it out of context \/ in Amy Winehouse’s plaintive cry.
\nso strange how the black man’s ‘blues’ traveled . . to come right back at us: full-throated, thru a slip of a Brit gypsy girl.<\/p>\n

\"Chris-watts-studio-#-6\"<\/a>
\nsuch is the fragility, and many layered-ness . . of 21st C. life.
\nthat I can see Chinese landscape painting, and hear Amy Winehouse – in a young painter giving voice to his troubled concerns, and opaque heritage.<\/p>\n

that I can see chrome, in what is surely: matte.
\nand, end of the line, dark, brooding ‘metallic’ . . emotion.<\/p>\n

\"Chris-watts----transfer\"<\/a>
\nthe one small throw-back to his earlier, more narrative graphite drawings, is this faint transfer image of a person, a woman – on an unfinished layer of super fragile, gauze.
\nis it 1940s ancestor ghostly ‘reality’ ?
\nit reads like a haunting, and . . sad history.<\/p>\n

\"Chris-watts,-JAN-21,-2017,-Brooklyn\"<\/a>
\nCHRIS WATTS was born in North Carolina . . .
\nbut grew up bi-coastal \/ via San Diego, California.
\nhe says he’s a ‘Southerner’ at heart – it’s those<\/strong> deeply embedded roots \/ that seem to have simmered throughout his life, rather than any sunny Cali waves.
\nNow Brooklyn-based, with his painting studio just off Lorimer, deep towards Meeker, he is also currently an artist-in-residence at the LMCC \/ Lower Manhattan Cultural Councils Workspace Program, in downtown Manhattan, where he does his video projects.<\/p>\n

view more of his work: links on left hand-side \/ I AM CHRIS WATTS – PORTFOLIO & LMCC WEBSITE<\/a><\/p>\n

CHRIS WATTS – STUDIO PHOTOS: NANCY SMITH. SAT JAN 21, 2017<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHRIS WATTS . .. has a solo show in Charlotte, NC at GALLERY TWENTY-TWO – opening tomorrow night. CHRIS WATTS: ‘Blahk on Blahk on Blak’ OPENING RECEPTION: SAT MARCH 11, 2017 the show runs thru APRIL 8, 2017 GALLERY TWENTY-TWO. CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA here are a couple of early install shots: the stretched base fabric […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32443"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32484,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32443\/revisions\/32484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}