CHRIS WATTS

Chris Watts is interested in creating moments of momentum and disruption during and after his process. By painting on soft and sheer textiles like poly- chiffon, silk, or poly blend wraps, disruption functions on a visual and tactile level. Thereby, the works foster an encompassing perceptual reception and a reconsideration of the terms of the visible. More recently, his work addresses the figurative and abstract role of the black body. Sourced from video footage depicting police violence towards black bodies, the works overturn prescribed modes of figurative representation by placing a sense of absence instead. By eliminating the figure, Chris Watts looks to emphasize the act of disappearance, a non-locatable subject, emancipating notions of blackness from the Western imagination and presenting possible ways in which history could be embodied.

Chris Watts (b. 1984 in High Point, North Carolina) graduated in Fine Arts from Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT, after attending the College of Arts and Architecture, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC, and the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Wroclaw, PL. The artist has held various artist residencies, among them the Marek Maria Pienkowski Foundation, Chelm, PL; McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Charlotte, NC; the Art & Law Fellowship Program, at Cornell University Art Architecture Planning, New York, NY; and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, New York, NY. His work has been exhibited in national and international institutional and exhibitions. Chris Watts lives and works in New York, NY, and North Carolina, NC, US.