Details:

In this painting, the artist creates a landscape that explores the nature of perception, the codes that permeate our world, and what it means to be real and alive if we—and everything around us—are code, too. Here, the artist’s deep green background color is overlaid with hard-edged forms based on satellite map imagery.
Unframed
Signed on the back

① Artwork:

Terrain Study 1

In this painting, the artist creates a landscape that explores the nature of perception, the codes that permeate our world, and what it means to be real and alive if we—and everything around us—are code, too. Here, the artist’s deep green background color is overlaid with hard-edged forms based on satellite map imagery.

In this series of “Terrain” paintings, the question of whether there is any fundamental difference between the natural world and the artificial one takes center stage. As terraformed images made from torn apart and recomposed fragments from the artist's landscape studies, these highly-abstracted landscape paintings become reminiscent of the cubist notion of simultaneity, medieval European painting before the advent of perspective, and the multi-perspectival paintings of traditional Indian and Chinese landscapes.

Christopher Astley’s art practice has always centered on questions concerning the underlying nature of reality. The relationship of time and space and, more recently, the codes that pervade and describe the universe have propelled his work into strange new territories.

Specs:

24 inches
30 inches

③ Artist:

Christopher Astley

Christopher Astley’s art practice has always centered on questions concerning the underlying nature of reality. The relationship of time and space and, more recently, the codes that pervade and describe the universe, such as the C G A T of DNA and 0s and 1s of digital code, have propelled the work into strange new territories.

Christopher Astley was born in 1965 in Lansing, MI, and lives in New York City, NY. He received a BGS from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI (1988).

Astley has exhibited his work at Tracy Williams Ltd. in New York City, NY (2018); Martos Gallery in New York City, NY (2014); Leo Koenig in New York City, NY (2012); The Margulies Collection in Miami, FL (2011); Bravin Lee in New York City, NY (2010); and The H&R Block Art Space at The Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, MO (2004), among others.

Astley’s work has been featured in Cultured Magazine, Art in America, The New York Times, Interview Magazine, V Magazine, and Gotham Magazine.

Christopher Astley:
Terrain Study 1, 2023
Oil paint and Gesso on wood panel
30.0 × 24.0 inches /