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Artist Exhibitions:
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2010 - Westbeth Gallery,
(non-profit) NYC– “CHRIS
TWOMEY & Core Constellation,”
2010 - CREON Gallery (project
space), NYC – “ASTRAL FLUFF:
Carnal Bodies in Celestial
Orbit”
2006 - Tribes Gallery
(non-profit), NYC “MADONNA
SERIES”
2004 - Tribes Gallery
(non-profit), NYC “OMNI
SERIES, Art and Genetics in a
Digital Age”
SELECTED GROUP ...
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Artist Reviews:
Art in America
March 2007
Chris Twomey at Tribes by
---- Carey Lovelace
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"The Scientist" NEWS
Mitochondrial Madonnas
A painter reinvents the
Madonna and child genre using
imagery from genetics
By Arthur Warwick
[Published 27th October 2006
03:19 PM GMT]
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It's been a long time since
the artist Chris ...
Further Information
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Collections:
MONA Museum of New Art,
Detroit, MI
RHIZOME, New York, NY
Many private collections...
Further Information
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Statement for Chris Twomey
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CHRIS TWOMEY statement www.christwomey.com christwomey@earthlink.net
My body of work, inspired by themes of origins and identity, involves painting, drawing, film, installation, digital media and sound. Using my own life and experience as a female in society as springboard for meditations on the human condition and our interconnectivity, the work explores scientific, psychological, or conceptual ideas that impact our understanding of identity
FRACKED VENUS 2011 DVD
FRACKED VENUS examines how society reveres the priceless exterior of our healthy world, as exemplified by the youthful perfection of the VENUS de MILO sculpture and yet allows a frightening practice which releases toxins, pollutants, and unseen dangers that destroy our cells and infects our interior world with cancer, immunological illness, and mutations. A DVD accompanied by the sound of Fracking for Natural Gas drilling, animates the progress of a PET scan, which drills through the torso of human VENUS whose interior has been tainted and stained. A print of VENUS de MILO accompanies.
ASTRAL FLUFF: Carnal Bodies in Celestial Orbit, 2010 MULTIPLE DVDS (not included in 2004-2010 compile)
The repetitive actions that make up our days become the grid or structure that supports the foundation and assumptions of our lives. This endurance or resolve to keep going, to improve, and to continue, implies a faith that the next moment will come, connoting a lightness of being which imbues our resolution with profound delicacy.
WAVES AWAY 2009 DVD
Existence as seen from the point of view of millions of years in pondering the heritage of ancestors or their uneasy passage through the millenniums, the experience of time becomes changed and compressed. From such a perspective, our lives become a brief moment or a gesture in the sand – which is then elegantly washed away by waves as ancient as the earth’s beginnings. When we pass, we too share in the perpetual cycle of life; a cycle that is also currently at risk.
TSUNAMI 3000 AD, 2009 DVD
Inspired by recent news about Governor Spitzer illicit liaisons, Sen. Edwards and his “love” child, and other “passion based” stories broadcast on the news; I wondered about the reconciliation of our “animal” instincts with our ability to think dispassionately and analytically.I saw a flood; a tsunami, from a society far in the future. It was the year 3000 A.D. How would this culture deal with the ever present clash between the Dionysian (sex, lust, genetic imperative to mate) and the Apollonian (in vitro, controlled genetic recombination with plant/animal cells)? I saw the remnants of this society ultimately resolving their instinctual animal/cerebral dichotomy through DNA re-combination.
TRIUMPH OF THE XX, 2007-2009 DVD
“Triumph of the XX” evokes the passion of the XX chromosome (female) in its ability to heal a flaw or mutation in the DNA by recombining and backing up since there are two X’s. A red haired woman is the metaphor for this concept, as she recombines the genes of the world, healing division. Aluminum foil, a simple substrate found in the kitchen and commonly used by women for domestic labor, is elevated, along with this concept, to an articulation of the divine.
NMMindscapes, 2008
An interior exploration, this work is a outward manifestation of an inward state of identity. The hills, trees, rocks, brush and sand are transformed by my formal interest in the ethereal reality I found in New Mexico. This reality, which is now a memory, is colored by the present reality. The series reflect a true merging of self and selves over time.
MADONNA SERIES, 2004 DVD 1&2
The 8 paintings, 8 prints, DVD and print suite of the Madonna Series are modeled after classical religious paintings from the Renaissance. Using photographs of a diverse group of contemporary working mothers/children, these depictions borrow the iconography of a belief system, and recontextualize them in light of recent genomic discoveries.
BABIES, 1996-2001
In this work, the digitization of the image and manipulation of visual data becomes a metaphor for our new ability to manage, control, and change our genomic data. Using digitized photography mixed with paint, vinyl, or plastic, my film/computer training provides a background inspiring manipulated, serial, or edited imagery that visually depicts the concept of time in flat space and explores the conventions of post-modern narrative.
The subject matter is dangerous, for “baby” is an image fraught with cliché. That interests me.
CheeriOpus Series, 2000-2003
Using Cheerios, an American cereal fed to babies to instill dialogue, I ask, “what are our values as a people and as a nation, as we make choices necessary to our survival as a species?” What is our spiritual as well as physical sustenance? Conversely, what are we and our progeny expelling into the world?
OMNI SERIES, 2004 DVD
Twomey’s installation included 70 images of navels that were digitally re-coded from their photographic source, obtained at the HOWL Festival in the East Village. A hand written, unbroken line of text and data about recent genetic developments threaded through the images, leading the viewer to the gallery garden, where an 11 foot sculpture completed the experience. “OMNI SERIES” refers to “Omphalus,” another word for navel and in Greek mythology, a totem regarded as the center of the earth. “The umbilical cord was once the core of our existence/nourishment and our most profound human bond,” says Twomey. “It also contains the stem cells that help shape our destiny with their unique genetic code.”
At the opening, a live camera collected new image samples of people/navels to enrich the exhibition source. These new images of navels were digitized so that one person is seen through another’s filter, suggestive of genetic cloning and in keeping with Twomey’s interest in our self-identity. A DVD displayed the metamorphosis of navels to universes as a reflection of the infinite diversity of the stem cells.
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