18/06/2009 - 25/07/2009




Galeria SENDA is presenting the first one-man show of American painter CHRISTOPHER MIR (Baltimore, 1970) in Spain.
"I want to connect my work to the great traditions of European painting since the early Renaissance. In my mind the figure in a landscape is the critical theme of all of Western painting. And today this approach has many ominous ramifications. Fears of climate change, mass extinctions, the excesses and corruption of governments, the dehumanizing effects of globalization... We need more dream worlds. And these dream worlds can contain and transcend these fears and hopes."

Christopher Mir's paintings allude to the uncertainty and restlessness of the contemporary man in an age dominated by technology and digital information. His works, which present a fantastic universe inhabited by mythic figures, futuristic machines and buildings coexisting with ambiguous forms in unreal landscapes, invite viewers to experience a series of paradoxical relationships and unsettling juxtapositions.

Mir's oeuvre emerges directly from his interest in collage and accumulative image making. Over the years, Mir has culled hundreds of pictures from random sources -such as magazines, calendars, the Internet, or his own photographs- which form the basis for his paintings: a compilation of unrelated scenes stitched together digitally and translated onto canvas.

Inspired by his undergraduate studies in anthropology and his deep interest in primitive religions, Mir has honed a visual language that speaks of the metaphysical through a series of archetypal characters and situations that are revisited throughout his oeuvre -such as the goddess, the wanderer, the child, the animal spirit, the industrial menace, or nature. The various figures come together in faux creatures, allegorical scenes or psychological dramas, replete with provocative dichotomies such as the mystical versus the physical, the spiritual versus the secular, and the primal versus the futuristic.

Christopher Mir graduated in Painting and Anthropology at Marlboro College and received his MFA from Boston University (1998). He was one of the first artists selected to participate in the Artists Pension Trust. He has taken part in group exhibitions in museums and galleries through the USA, and has had solo shows since 2003. He made his European solo debut at Galerie Schuster Berlin in 2008. His works are included in important public and private collections, such as the Susan & Michael Hort Collection in New York. Mir currently lives and works in Hamden, Connecticut.

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