Chris Savage “Breaking Point” exhibit at Xchanges Gallery

My show at Xchanges Gallery consists of both ceramics and 2D works. The theme is the re-appropriation of the classic blue and white Delftware designs with a contemporary shift. Breaking Point, the shows title, refers to our current relationship with the environment and Delftware presented itself as a suitable medium to express  my ideas about the situation. Typically the designs show scenes of natural beauty or religious motifs, which I looked to subvert in order to highlight the paradox and cost of progress. The ceramic materials also looked to reference this as they were sourced from thrift stores and hand embellished with the dystopian imagery. My aim in the gallery was to create a museum-like environment, displaying the ceramics with the drawings, to cause the viewer to initially question whether or not these are historical or contemporary works. 

Christopher Savage at The Fifty Fifty Arts Collective

The visual image plays a large roll in our lives, drawing typically acts as the initial part of a process which ends in a different medium. However, Christopher finds drawing to be the simplest and most effective medium based on its immediacy and economy. His recent work is exploring the intersects between humanity and nature, specifically how we interact with the environment given the technological advancements and there cause and effect relationship with the environment. Aesthetically he looks to deconstruct what is seen and done into an encompassed image that presents the content in a simplified way. In doing this Chris hopes to allow the viewer to have to look deeper in order to put together the overall image and its implications. By utilizing techniques of repetition, pattern, and subject matter that conveys a sense of idealized beauty he looks to question how our ideals are informed by Art History. Historical themes are present within the content and the mediums of my recent work as a way to explore how our present knowledge of the past is ever more being informed by technology, which is as positive as it is problematic. From the first line of a piece to the last Christopher feels he develops better control over what he wants to achieve. Change becomes reliable as a way to learn and move forward.

Chris Savage and Taryn Coulson at the fifty fifty arts collective