The solo exhibition “Chris Maker: People, Place and State 2005-2015,” a retrospective of 10 years of artist Chris Maker’s work, will debut in the Shade Gallery at MonOrchid on First Friday.
The exhibition is a collection of three series of works spanning over Maker’s years as an urban planner, as well as practicing architecture and architectural design.
Maker said that those experiences and his own criticism of them have been the focus of his paintings.
“The basis of my work is the critical examination of my professional activities in architecture and planning,” Maker said.
First, his Plan’dscapes series expresses his frustrations and challenges as a planner. The pieces, which he described as more traditional, are painted in oil and juxtaposed with screen prints of planning language.
“This series looks at the experience of being in a place, versus the the jargon of a place,” Maker said. “The prescriptive planning that seeks to define a place.”
The next series is based on similar themes tackled in different media and iconography: image capture and 3-D computer model software. The paintings were dictated by a medium and informed by the idea of looking at a computer screen, he added.
“The pieces are an attempt to use abstract thinking to go beyond the planning, professional blinders and really think about what I was doing in a critical sense,” Maker said.
The third series in the show deals with the people from his experiences with architecture and being an architectural designer. Maker said this series is possibly his most free and loose of the three.
“It’s different,” he said. “I know what’s behind it and the activities and the hidden agendas behind all of that stuff, which I think gives the work value and force, that way it’s more informed.”
Maker said he considers himself lucky to be able to do such an examination of his career. People get stuck in a pattern of only looking at their jobs professionally, he added.
“Most people, they’ll go into a profession and suddenly they’ll have blinders on,” Maker said. “So seldom do they have this ability to critique what they’re doing themselves and use the idea of abstract thought to remove themselves from that and see the shortcomings that are happening.”
Nicole Royse, a curator at MonOrchid who has watched Maker’s career for around eight years, said she felt that the large Shade Gallery at MonOrchid would be the perfect location for his retrospective show.
“It’s going to be a great show because his style really has evolved through the years,” Royse said. “It’s only fitting because he’s been creating work for a really long time.”
Maker said he is excited to present work from his experiences living in many different places around the country and spanning over a period of time.
“I hope some of those themes begin to percolate,” he said. “Sometimes when you do show older work like that, in a place like this, as an artist that jogs more ideas and triggers more ideas for future ideas in a place I’m working in now.”
The opening reception of “Chris Maker: People, Place and State 2005-2015” will be held on First Friday, Feb. 5 from 6-10 p.m. A closing reception will be held on Friday, Feb. 19 from 6-10 p.m. The exhibition will be on display at MonOrchid until Feb. 28.
Contact the reporter at hope.flores@outlook.com.
