Chris Cran: That’s An Excellent Question!

Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to present That’s An Excellent Question! a new body of work by Canadian painter Chris Cran on view November 15– December 27, 2014. The exhibition marks Cran’s first solo show in Los Angeles.

That’s An Excellent Question! is an extension of Cran’s The Chorus Series, which was an earlier body of work that was first presented in 2006 in an exhibition entitled Novel, and again more thoroughly in an 2011 exhibition entitled Reading Room, both at Trépanier Baer Gallery.  The ongoing series consists of a selection of oval and round paintings that each contain a face expressing enjoyment, surprise, curiosity, doubt, or disdain and looks beyond the periphery of the work itself.  The Chorus portraits are intended to be placed around other works of art (by Cran or others) thereby appropriating those works and engaging them into a larger theatre of viewing, like the Greek Chorus from which the series is named.

For this exhibition Cran has created 31 new works, a combination of Chorus portraits and a number of larger still life paintings to invite the gazes of the ‘Chorus’ and await their  judgement. The works will float on the gallery walls, high and low, like the putti or cherubs in Renaissance and post-Renaissance paintings who also float around and, like the Greek chorus, comment on the main dramatic action.

Cran employs a wide-ranging color palette and experiments with textures as well as varied techniques to evoke the photographic image. His work explores the construction of personal and cultural identities and perceptual/cognitive illusion, both interests critically underpinned by  the artist’s disarming and revelatory sense of humor.