Christopher Wynter: Between Moments

Christopher Wynter’s work continues his long-standing commitment to the exploration of color, form, and abstraction as means to expand the boundaries between art and consciousness. He draws upon an individual reserve of personal and collective memories to activate a meaningful form of engagement that celebrates the richness as well as the relationship of imagery and patterns in contemporary society. In the body of work included in this exhibition, the artist reveals an uncanny ability to reduce forms and ideas to their essence in his search for an alternative aesthetic and discursive framework that mines the nuances inherent in his use of a specific language of interacting primal shapes that are meticulously composed, shifting, overlapping, and often unresolved to create works evocative of social hierarchies.

His compositions of spaces, complex but clearly structured on vertical and horizontal axes facilitates notions of containment, isolation, resolution, possibilities as well as forms not fully realized, all of which can be seen as metaphors for human social constructs and dynamics. Several of the more recent paintings, having radically reduced color, starkly create an intriguing spatial ambiguity. and dramatic journey to visually wander through very dark textured shapes contrasted with the very light spaces between. The artist is aware of the interplay of intention and accident; curiosity and discovery as well as an open-ended improvisational sensibility to create works that comes alive to convey temporal and spatial dimensions.

Christopher’s extensive travels in Africa, Europe and Asia over the years have helped him to develop an approach to life and art that synthesizes into a distinct and dynamic whole the various components of his identity and create work that makes meaning of a collective history as well as the ambiguities and contradictions of contemporary culture. Funded by the Asian Cultural Council, Art International and others, he has lived and worked with artisans and artists in Cote d’Ivoire and Mali, as well as the Amis (Indigenous peoples of Taiwan), and the Ainu (indigenous people of Japan). Exhibitions include PS1/Institute of Contemporary Art, 1989, From the Studio: Artist-in-Residence, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 1992; Altos de Chavon, Dominican Republic, 1996; Bronx Museum of Art, 2000, Kuala Lumpur Art Center, Malasia, 2021, a Gathering of the Tribes, NYC, 2010 etc. With an interest in reaching the wider interest for public works, he has translated his language of finding meaning in non-representational and representational form and shape to sculpture and public works including glass mosaic for NYC MTA subway system; Commissioned public sculpture in wood and steel in Guatemala, Central America; Dominican Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa; Aibetsu, Japan, Hualein, Taiwan and New London, CT. He lives and works in NYC.