Christopher Colville
Dark Hours Horizon 18, 2015

Gelatin silver prints, 10 x 27 inches
Unique, signed, verso
Framed
Courtesy of the artist and Rick Wester Fine Art, Inc.
Estimated value: $7,200

Sitting under the gnarled branches of a large mesquite, I watch the sliver of a waxing moon dip low on the horizon. A summer storm has forced pause in my work. First the wind and dust turn the tarped walls of my impromptu darkroom into a billowing creature punctuated with the light and smoke of my fiery exposures.

Through the summer I engaged in multiple projects driven by cycles of weather and the moon. I waited for the dark hours when the moon was low or small in the sky and the sun's reflective gaze reduced to darkness. I toiled through storms in these precious hours through the summer solstice. My conspirator, a night-blooming Cereus grown from cuttings I have carried from my childhood home, shared my productive cycle, awaiting the dark hours to explode. The Cereus’s great white blossoms, open once at night during the hot months of the summer, only to close with the rising sun.

This work, which started as an exploration pulling at the base elements of photographic medium, evolved to explore energy, fluid, motion, light, chaos, reactive materials, and violence. The work in this exhibition follows this line but it is a reprieve from many of these endeavors, offering a move toward meditative simplicity. Seduced by the reduction of fire and chaos into a single line, a delineation, a separation and horizon that resonates with desert landscape, the storms that give pause and the western states that are on fire. This single line disrupting the traditional flat surface of the paper pulls attention to its creation while opening the possibility of discovery through suggestion of depth. I followed these images, night after night repeating, refining, small explosions, meditating on a single evolving line until the sun's reflection on the moon was too bright to work.

About the Artist:
Christopher Colville

Christopher Colville was born in Tucson, Arizona, in 1974. He spent his formative years exploring the desert arroyos and abandoned lots developing a deep connection to the desert and desire for the unknown. Christopher received his BFA in anthropology and photography from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1997 and his MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico in 2003. After leaving New Mexico, he returned to the Sonoran Desert, building a home and studio in Phoenix, Arizona. Chris has spent his time in Phoenix exploring the desert with his wife and children, forming a life and art practice informed by and connected to the desert space. Focused on the dual nature of creation and destruction, Colville’s artwork explores the boundaries of the photographic medium in both traditional and experimental forms.

Christopher’s work has been included in multiple national and international exhibitions and publications. His work is held in the permanent collections of the John Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Center for Creating Photography, Tucson, AZ; Princeton Museum of Art, NJ; Main Museum of Art, Wright State University, Dayton, OH; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA; JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, New York.

Website: christophercolville.com | rickwesterfineart.com
Instagram: @christophercolville | @rwfa_nyc