Chris Ritson
In the Kingdom of Charisma
…depicting the innate power of circumstance…
Opening reception: Thursday, February 3rd.
Show runs until Saturday, February 26th.
Ever Gold Gallery Is please to announce their first biyearly residency program. With our growing desire to work with artists who create full scale mixed media installations we have decided to help aid this process by allowing two, three week installation periods in January and August. This will allow our artists to transform the viewer’s perception of the gallery space and create a site-specific work, thus pushing the traditional ideas of a commercial gallery show by allowing emerging artists to work in a museum like environment.
A celebration of our anxieties pertaining to the body, identity, and nature: “In the Kingdom of Charisma” is a multi-media exhibit created during a three weeklong residency at Ever Gold Gallery. Through installation, video and images created by growing crystals, organisms and media collages, Chris Ritson represents the nuances of how we construct an individual identity distinct from the vast cosmology that animates our lives.
In the presence of an expansive and seemingly divine gift, our opinions become entranced. The power of charisma can be traced like a current through the annals of history, possessing kings and criminals alike. Charisma is an esoteric science; existing, by definition, as a gift from beyond the human realm, and accessible to a select few. It emanates from those who are set apart by a persuasive, interpersonal power; those who we reference through shared narrative, the archetypes and gods, dictators and celebrities.
Chris Ritson has a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is one of the 2011 Headlands Center for the Arts Residency finalists. Ritson has shown in two group shows at Ever Gold in 2009 and 2010, this will be his first solo show with the gallery.
chrisritson.com
SF Weekly, Walk into the Cult of Personality, Published February 2011
By Heidi De Vries
In a gallery that has displayed Mark McCloud’s LSD blotter art and the post-apocalyptic interactive sculpture of Josh Short, it’s no surprise the curators would make the bold move of turning the space over to Chris Ritson. Ritson makes art that is almost alchemical in nature, incorporating crystals he has grown as well as other wonders of the natural world. He fuses an interest in science with investigations into personal identity. With his exhibition “In the Kingdom of Charisma,” Ritson is the first to make use of the gallery’s semiannual residency program, in which artists take three weeks to convert the “white box” space into an immersive installation. Ritson uses video and mixed media to explore how we become drawn to certain personalities, those powerful figures who seem to possess an otherworldly attractiveness whether they are celebrities or politicians. It’s brave for a commercial gallery to give an artist this amount of latitude in its space, but the results are nothing if not hypnotic.
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