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Christopher Russell
After the Golden Age
February 2-March 17, 2012

Russell’s second exhibition at the gallery will be a ceramic still-life installation comprised of multiple elements including fruit bowls, birds and obelisks. The elements have historical references to European decorative arts and monuments as well as natural history and Russell is using a new glaze that mimics the feeling of stone.

Russell describes the impetus for this new body of work: "The essential element of the still life is not the golden goblet or the Ming bowl, or even the pile of luxurious fruit. The essential element of the still life is the bug haunting the fruit bowl, the worm that burrows into the surreally beautiful apple. All still life is haunted. It is haunted with desire and greed, with the past and loss, with ostentation and pride.

I started the work that has become "After the Golden Age" when I got back to the studio from a trip to Paris, the sadness of beauty and grandeur was very strong. The world is so beautiful, there are so many beautiful things, but sometimes it all feels cursed.”

Currently, Russell is completing a commission for the Metropolitan Transit Authority's Arts for Transit office who selected his design proposal for the 9th Avenue Brooklyn Station. The commis- sion includes cast bronze ornamental gates and finials in the shapes of magnified, bee-covered honeycombs and flowers. The motifs of bees and birds and thistles have been carried over from his earlier ceramic work shown here in 2009 and at Wave Hill in 2008.

Christopher Russell
After the Golden Age
February 2-March 17, 2012

Finial from Bees for Sunset Park, 2012
9th Avenue Station
Bronze
Fabricated by Modern Art Foundry and Christopher Russell
Commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit and MTA New York City Transit
Funding provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Shelf from left to right:
Aragonite, 2011/12
Rosalia Alpina, 2011/12
Botryostrobus Auritus-Australis, 2011/12
cast bronze and glazed cast ceramic
edition of 6

After the Golden Age, 2011-12
installation including forty one glazed white terracotta sculptures on base, 72 x 36 x 45”

Works are also available individually:
Large Bird with Gems
Large Fruit Basket
Baroque Shell
Large Urn
Helmut with Bird
Bird on Crystals
Bust
Small Urn with Bird
Head with Bird Coral on Pedestal
Foot/ Bird
Urn with Crystals
Head

Obelisks:
Small obelisks
Large obelisks
Obelisk with lions and Birds
Obelisks with Birds and Decorations



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For additional information contact the gallery

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installation views:




detail views:


Large Fruit Basket, Obelisk, Small Urn with Bird


Large Urn


Head with Bird, Helmut with Bird


Obelisk with Lions and Birds, Large Obelisk


Coral on Pedistal, Large Bird with Gems


Large Obelisks, Baroque Shell



Bust


Shelf with cast bronze and glazed cast ceramic works
 

Aragonite


Rosalia Alpina

 
Botryostrobus Auritus-Australis