Chris Wade @ TARTINE December 18, 2008

CHRIS WADE
Systems of Transference: Selected Works

December 18th – January 22nd
OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, December 18th from 9pm - 11pm

Curated by Brianna Toth

TARTINE
600 Guerrero Street at 18th
San Francisco, CA

Chris Wade's work navigates the pathways between the organic landscape and that of the digital image. Systems of Transference provides a visual survey of his work and also the transition of how his creative focus evolved from distancing himself from reproduction technologies to finding a way that they compliment his artistic process.

Early works include fastidious drawings reminiscent of American Regionalist painters such as John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton – artists who revolted against the industrial revolution of the 1950s and focused on rural nostalgia. Like these artists, Wade's earlier works attempted to divorce themselves from digital reproduction and techniques. Wade's paintings parallel this focus on nature by illustrating the naturally occurring systems of transference and respiration from which we draw life energy and with which we interact. In the past, Wade addressed these themes through a study of trees, using them as a vehicle to examine the movement and volume of light. In this series tree silhouettes are carved out of layers of paint to reveal organic pathways, sinuous lines and portraits of the simple engines that sustain us. Motivated to create something that could not be replicated digitally, the traces of his handiwork are made evident through his sculpting and scraping away of the paint.

In more recent work Wade depicts these abstract forces more literally by illustrating circular patterns that ebb and flow around one another until they become a pulsating mass of shapes and arches. Moving away from the objects that support and exemplify these systems of transference, Wade now attempts to paint the blueprint of these naturally occurring forces which is the linchpin of his work.

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Christopher Wade is a San Francisco based artists who is completely self-taught. Wade’s drawings and paintings utilize his professional experiences with photography and set building, as well as his personal experience of being a father. He has previously shown at Hive Gallery and Collectively GRASP.

Official Website: http://www.tartinebakery.com