Christopher Patch: New Pictures

5 September - 11 October 2003

Monique Meloche: Hi Chris, any news on what can I expect in the gallery for your New Pictures show?

 

Christopher Patch:
Paintings on canvas (varying sizes) and a shitload of drawings/watercolors in many shapes and sizes (actually most are 8 x 10 inches, many framed…oh, yeah and a large cut-out that I’m waiting to get back from the framers. I would also like to paint some images on the walls (that part is a surprise–even to me). Images range from swamps to mountains, seascape/nautical, drawings may be anything from rainbow trout to high school students (from 70s yearbooks). Sorry if this all sounds pretty vague but I am bringing an assortment and will see how/what works in the space.

 

The following is a list of catch words and phrases that may be of some help in writing a press release (not in any particular order):

 unspoiled scenic wonders, symphony of color, American wonderlands, awe-inspiring, majestic, weirdly beautiful, unreal-idyllic, “super nature”, deadpan, wonky, summer love, strangely familiar, awkward, melodrama, fake-o realism, homespun-fantasy-craft, saturated color, muted color, high contrast-hard edges, use of abstraction, floating chunks-o-color, perceptions of nature, culture’s representation of natural world, fictionalized worlds?, ambiguous backdrops?, sentimentality.

 

responding to/inspired by/influences: 

books/magazines/films/photography, more specifically commercial art of the 1930s-50s, See America posters, National Parks, Reader’s Digest books on nature, museum display murals, American artists like Charles Burchfield; Rockwell Kent; Fairfield Porter; Milton Avery; Arthur Wesley Dow; Herge (creator of Tintin), women’s health manuals (1970s), Time Life Special Editions for Young People, high school yearbooks (vulnerability and awkward moments).

 

Christopher Patch (American b.1974, lives Maine) has his MFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago (2000) and marks his return to Chicago with his first solo show at moniquemeloche gallery. Recent group shows include “Here and Now” at the Chicago Cultural Center curated by James Rondeau, Greg Knight, Lanny Silverman, and Marianne Richter; “On a Clear Day” with Suzanne Caporael, Anne Chu & Christina Hejtmanek at Gahlberg Gallery; mixer03 at moniquemeloche; and a special project for Bridge Magazine “Kooky Kave Kut’N’Fold.”