mnartists.org: Chris Charbonneau

Martha and Stefan 2010

Chris Charbonneau — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:43:24 GMT

Homeopathy (portrait of Kenny)

Chris Charbonneau — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:39:14 GMT

Kenny the chief was an important figure in Norfolk, so it was natural that, in accordance with tradition, I would do a portrait of him. At the same time there was a lot of attention directed towards a bear seen in the area. I felt the bear and Kenny had a simular energy, and so I depicted Kenny with bear qualities. By taking on these qualities I felt this new Kenny was somehow able to ward off bears, becoming a amulet protecting the rest of the students at Norfolk. Using the ailment as the cure is a principal of homeopathy, so I started thinking about other ailment/ cure relationships that applied to Kenny. I decided that the cook/ cooking equipment relationship, that is, put simply, fire that hurts and fire that works to nurish, was fitting of Kenny. I was also thinking about the myth of Prometheus and so used a system of hot and cool to create strategic tensions between sides of the painting.

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Chris Charbonneau — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:17:57 GMT

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Chris Charbonneau — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:22:54 GMT

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Chris Charbonneau — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:15:50 GMT

Bastard

Chris Charbonneau — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:11:31 GMT

Struggle 2 (working title)

Chris Charbonneau — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:07:27 GMT

Lens Cap

Chris Charbonneau — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:00:20 GMT

Trouble 1

Chris Charbonneau — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:59:38 GMT

Struggle 1

Chris Charbonneau — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:57:00 GMT

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Chris Charbonneau — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:55:51 GMT

Untitled

Chris Charbonneau — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:54:46 GMT

10. Collaborative Proposal for Public Art Work ("What If We Bubblewrapped the U?")

Chris Charbonneau — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:24:00 GMT

Marker, Pen, Color Pencil on Paper. 12 ½ X 18 in. Spring 2008. This work was produced as part of a group project to imagine a public art work. My job was to visually express how the installation (essentially a bubblewrapping of campus) would look. The style I used to work out this illustration has followed me even to the present. As to the idea that was imagined, bubblewrapping campus was imagined to, at least on an apprpriate date, to slow pedistrian traffic and to provide some resistance to monotony and habit of everyday rituals (pretty much every public art work, so we didn't achieve much I suppose). With thousands of oppurtunites to "pop" the bubblewrap, classgoers would be able to release any pressure or anxiety that was ailling them.

Sugar Coated: The Pyramid Falls Down Upon Children

Chris Charbonneau — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:03:02 GMT

Metal Rod, Receipts, Welch’s Jelly, Dolls. Performance / Installation in Exhibition Room, Regis E. Spring 2008. The concept and execution of this piece came before the financial crisis, and, for me, the moral issues that it rose feel today almost as a premonition of that diaster. Specifically, I was working with the idea of the economic pyramid as both a system of supports that couldn't withstand its strains and an object of oppression. The people at the top draw their power from the people at the bottom, from their purchases, alluded to in the myriad reciepts covering the pyramid structure hanging over the dolls. The pyramid was cut and had a spike in its interior to "communicate" the force of the bottom-most section of the pyramid onto the dolls. I preformed the piece as a sort of "Groundhog's Day" experiment, asking whether the children would be impaled by the pyramid. When I preformed the piece they were not, and the piece ended on an optimistic note. The dolls were covered in jelly. For me, this imagery developed a commentary about how we spin systems to be favorable or to simply distract others from the precarious nature of these systems. To our children, these institutional systems are very much "sugar-coated." The juxtaposition of sweets and children also brings up a contemporary dialogue about childhood obesity, pointing out connections between economic systems and the amount of sugar consummed by small children.

image: Sugar Coated: The Pyramid Falls Down Upon Children

image: Sugar Coated (detail)

image: Sugar Coated (detail)

Life After the Magic School Bus

Chris Charbonneau — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:30:04 GMT

Marker on Paper. 18 x 24 in. Spring 2009. Series created to investigate color patterns where "The Neverending Trials of Akane Tendo" left off. In the process I also found ways to generate large amounts of imagery, organizing the imagery with powerful compositional tools. "Life After the Magic School Bus" centers on the heroic everyman and the swarming conflict rushing about him. He is Jim from [i]The Office[/i], if Jim encountered more dinosaurs and robots. "The End of the World" was meant to be a sequel to "Life After the Magic School Bus" (yes, I think in episodes). What it ended up being was a hodge-podge of ideas and relationships. "We Put That Button There (So He Wouldn't Press It)" was intended to be the third of the series, but its dramatic change in style proved too different to be included in a tryptech. "Days Spent Shoppings" started as a commentary about consumerism, comparing it to colonialism. What it ended up being, for be, was something of a [i]Dawn of the Dead [/i]remix. "The Horizon (Historian's Fallacy)" is a look into the past of my family, shifting ideas to develop a commentary (and then realizing that this commentary means nothing). It also pokes at some open sores in the art world.

image: The End of the World

image: We Put That Button There (So He Wouldn't Push It)

image: Days Spent Shopping

image: The Horizon (Historian's Fallacy)