Artist's Statement
My works tend to fluctuate between the poles of abstraction and figuration: the truth of the paint film and the illusion of the image. By rendering form from abstraction, the image grows into a chimera of grotesqueries, a self-portrait of sorts in many forms. Recently, I've been practicing this process within the conventions of portraiture and still-life. These conventions tend to express and reveal notions of personal and collective identity. By rendering form from abstraction within the context of portraiture and still-life, the viewer/sitter dynamic is destabilized and we begin to see personal identity in a new visual context. In a time when we are constantly prodded with fearful messages, suggestions of immanent terror and visceral horror, I feel compelled to contemplate mortality and find peace and consolation in the real beauty of decay and impermanence. I feel this is the only way to know peace and truth.
– CRVM
Artist's Bio
Christian Rex van Minnen lives and works in the western US.
Selected Recent Exhibitions: 2011 – group exhibition, Museet Biologiska, Stockholm, Sweden; Empty Anniversary Show, Ambush Gallery, Sydney, Australia; INLE, Gallery 1988, Los Angeles, California; Letter Collector, Gallery Hijinks, San Francisco, California; Dystopia, CoproGallery, Santa Monica, California; Another Roadside Attraction, ISE Cultural Foundation, New York, New York. 2010 – solo exhibition, Bert Green Fine Art, Los Angeles, California; group exhibition, MiTO Contemporary, Barcelona, Spain. 2009 – Neo-Grotesque, Roq la Rue Gallery, Seattle, Washington; Quinquennium Exhibitum, Gallery Nucleus, Los Angeles, California; OCHO: Numero Atomico, ROJO Artspace, Barcelona, Spain. 2008 – The 13th Hour, Last Rites Gallery, New York, New York; 15th Annual Realism Invitational, Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Manfungus Series 1.2
Cathartes
Abstract Figurative Series #1.2
2007, oil on canvas, 24"×30"
Abstract Figurative Series #2.6
Keyhole Portrait 3.4
Manfungus Series 1.1
Still life 1.1
Still life 1.5
2009, oil on canvas, 22"×28"
Uvas, Rainbow Blight Series
2010, oil on canvas, 20"×23.5"