CHRISTOPHER SPROAT

In partnership with The Black Box Museum, C X Silver Gallery is pleased to present the work of Christopher Sproat, opening reception Saturday November 11, 2-4 pm.

In 2008, Sproat designed and built The Black Box, a museum to house his work. Sproat explains: “In this building, I built what could be called an electro-mythic scenario, a tableau that suggests a parallel culture. That culture is the result of the same forces, with the same technology, as in our history and current news.  The historical influences range from African, to Surrealism, Art Deco, Egyptian and Constructivist art. Also influential are living creatures in nature, Dinosaur skeletons, the ‘architecture’ of insects, and Medieval armor found in museums. This space can be viewed as a Gothic Futurist tomb of artifacts. At the same time, many of my sculptures are conditions of two opposites in a process. The inferences of weaponry and abstracted skeletal remains of creatures that have quasi-human, animal, fish and insect origin are all morphed together. Many of the pieces have beauty from their insect- or plant-based forms.”

Sproat on PARALLEL CULTURE:

View this installation as artifacts that are not literal or abstract.

Most of these objects are a hybrid of biology and human geometry.

Many tell a story about the plight of living things.

What humans have discovered.

And done to them.

The sources are in our history, scientific discoveries and the story of my ongoing personal reactions to everything.

What I have banished is popular culture and the monetization of everything.

Every object is meant to be an invention that has virtually no relation to other art.

As an atheist, the emphasis is on real life, a deep melancholy for our planet.”

Sproat conceives of the whole Gallery space not so much as an exhibition but as an installation and an environment. “What goes into each art piece is a story. The focus is not just the art objects of themselves but how they reflect the viewer back out into reality. It trampolines out into myriad parts of life.”

Christopher Sproat attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Boston University and Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts. His solo exhibitions include Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the Athenaeum, Barbara Krakow Gallery, and Harcus Krakow Rosen Sonnabend Gallery, M.I.T.’s Hayden Gallery in Cambridge, and New York’s Marian Goodman Gallery and the Bette Stoler Gallery. Group exhibitions have included Museum of Fine Arts Boston’s Elements of Art, the Whitney Biennial, and The Museum of Modern Art (NY). Grants and fellowships have included New York Foundation for the Arts, Massachusetts Arts and Humanities Foundation, and three from National Endowment for the Arts.