Details:

This work explores how the practice of collecting can shape the creation of domestic spaces. This work also alludes to the colonial heritage of collecting through the inclusion of “ethnic” masks on the walls.
Unframed
Signed

① Artwork:

The Fortunes of the Team

This work explores how the practice of collecting can shape the creation of domestic spaces. From the most lavish to the most impoverished of circumstances, the spaces that humans inhabit take form through the amassing of objects. Beyond the functional value of these objects, collecting might serve a variety of unconscious purposes, such as: exhibiting a material archive of wealth; documenting travel and performing worldliness; creating a narrative of personal achievement; or attempting to craft an aesthetic sensibility ultimately tied to norms of gender, class, racial, religious or national identity.

This work also alludes to the colonial heritage of collecting through the inclusion of “ethnic” masks on the walls of the imaginary figure's space. While this work creates multiple meanings and readings, it ultimately creates a dreamspace that might appear as the nightmare of our historical present—or a vision of a world that hovers just beyond the threshold of perception.

Chris Fallon is known for his striking images of ambiguous figures that both draw on and challenge existing traditions of portraiture. The artist's work challenges American notions of masculinity and femininity as perpetuated by Old Hollywood, advertising and other forms of media. His non-binary figures hover in a liminal zone beyond the gendered archetypes that have shaped the history of American domesticity. The artist considers his work somewhere in-between formal portraiture and satirical cartoons, with the tension between so-called highbrow and lowbrow art forms a foundation of his practice.

Specs:

14 inches
18 inches

③ Artist:

Chris Fallon

Chris Fallon’s work is informed by the tension between so-called highbrow and lowbrow art. The artist uses a flat technique to depict oblivious figures, their mouths unflatteringly agape in mid-speech; for the inanimate plants and other things that surround these subjects, the artist employs a more painterly technique. Fallon’s work exists at the meeting point between formal portraiture and satirical cartoons.

BIO:

Chris Fallon was born in Princeton, New Jersey in 1976.

Solo and two-person exhibitions of Fallon’s work have taken place at: the Untitled Art Fair, with Masako Miki and CULT Aimee Friberg, in Miami, Florida (2021); Irresistible Deception at CULT Aimee Friberg in San Francisco, California (2021), Interiority and Other Objects at Park Life Gallery in San Francisco, California (2020); and Each Other at Percy Gallery in Oakland, California (2014).

Group exhibitions that have shown Fallon’s work include: the Seattle Art Fair, with CULT Aimee Friberg, in Seattle, Washington (2022); the Nada Art Fair, with Landing Gallery, in New York City (2022); Thaw at Landing Gallery in Los Angeles, California (2022); Janus—Seven Year Anniversary at CULT Aimee Friberg in San Francisco, California (2021); Spring/Break Art Show in Los Angeles, California (2020) and Sun-kissed Chokehold at Y53 in Los Angeles, California (2018).

Fallon’s work is included in the public collections of: the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; and the Los Angeles Contemporary Archives in Los Angeles, California. 

Fallon lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Chris Fallon:
The Fortunes of the Team, 2022
Acrylic on wood panel
18.0 × 14.0 inches /