Spotlight on Chris Dominick, Visiting Faculty in Sculpture
GREAT BARRINGTON, MA — Simon’s Rock Visiting Faculty in Sculpture Chris Domenick has
unveiled his latest solo exhibition Private Figure at the Main Gallery of Wesleyan University's Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery.
Chris Domenick is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, sculpture, drawing, and writing. His work explores the poetics of materiality and craft, often engaged with vernacular forms of architecture, design, and the decorative arts. He utilizes abstraction as a means to examine the semantics of surface, shape, and touch.
An extension of his studio practice based out of a former Subway restaurant in Canaan, CT, Private Figure is composed of framed wall-based works and lamps, where drawings also exist as sculptures akin to collage, and even the light and shadows cast by the lamps create a piece of artwork on the exhibit floors.
In his Private Figure series, Domenick explores “designed objects that recall domestic interiors.” Focusing heavily on the relationship between lamps, space, frames as a “suspender” rather than a “finisher,” he expands on the motif of deconstruction that is often found in his practice: the collapsing of categories of distinction, as the artists explains it, where formed and found objects are often indistinguishable, and authorship waivers between “kitschy” craftsperson and “contemporary” artist.
“While this ontological companionship could be framed as the lamp lights the artwork,” Domenick explains, “it may be more apt to say that the artwork enables a clearer viewing of the lamp.”
Visitors can immerse themselves in Domenick’s exhibit until March 2. The gallery is open from Tuesday through Sunday from noon to 5pm.