Chris Collins Sculpture

These works are a continuation of the metal castings which began in the urban environment. Since relocating to a rural environment in 2023, I began to integrate natural objects, cast in metal through a direct burnout process.

This body of work delves into the technique and philosophy of the cut-up, a method rooted in the act of dissecting and reassembling fragments of information. Inspired by the cut-up method popularized by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, I explore the transformative power of tearing apart and reconstructing images and found objects through collage and sculptural process. Taking influence of the fragmentation of culture and language illustrated in T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land," it is through the rearranging of these cultural fragments that a new meaning can emerge.

In the spirit of the cut-up method, I engage in the act of sampling, a practice that has been integral to both my theoretical framework and artistic process, initially cultivated during my involvement with electronic music. Drawing parallels between sampling a sound or beat and taking a mold of an object, I perceive this as a means of archiving and reproducing physical information. Just as a musical sample can be removed from its original context and repurposed, these "samples" in the form of found images and objects undergo a similar transformation, shedding their initial utility to assume a new existence as fragments of information waiting to be rearranged or remixed.

With these sculptures, recognizable elements are dissected, molded, and cast together in metal to craft singular amalgamations of organic and industrial remnants. Obsolete electronics, abandoned KN95 masks, and fragments of shattered glass merge with palm fronds and delicate trumpet flowers, giving rise to entities that establish their own connections while preserving the echoes of their original forms.
In essence, the act of cutting up and reconstructing becomes a metaphorical and tangible exploration of the reshaping of cultural artifacts, mirroring the way in which contemporary culture samples and remixes existing elements to create something novel and thought-provoking.

This is a selection of castings and objects from 2017 to current.

A selection of collages from 2019-2022.

Contemporary culture primarily presents itself to us through the screen.  We look to screens for entertainment, information, communication and commerce.  Through advertising, screens tell us what we should want, what we should be doing, and who we should be.  The television screen holds a place of reverence at the center of the household, as a kind of altar, portal, and vessel.  It only makes sense that upon their ceasing as useful objects they are shot, shattered, and left in the desert as an act of ritual destruction. 

Across time and culture, the breaking of ceremonial vessels has been practiced.  Through the act of shooting, these vessels of culture are destroyed as the shooter takes vengeance upon its master, turns violent image upon itself, and likewise celebrates the power of the television.  Other vessels of cultural importance give us an altered perspective, though either medicine or machine. It is my intention to use the destroyed objects through which we view our world, whether TV, bottle, or windshield, as a monument to the power of these objects and as to illustrate the peculiar destructive rituals of contemporary culture.

This body of work consists of several materials and processes, ranging from the use of readymades and collage techniques, to works of casting and printmaking.  The bullet ridden source material of LCD screens, windshields, signs, boxes and bottles was scavenged from the desert outskirts of Santa Fe alongside arroyos, fences, and embankments.  Readymades exist as a television body, signs, and car windshield.  LCD screen fragments are utilized as form of collage, adhered together to form a veil.  LCD screen is used as a tool for printmaking as well, through inking of the fragments and utilizing a press.  Windshield and bottle fragments have been molded and cast in metals and resin, highlighting the fractured beauty of the once important cultural objects. 

These works consist of debris collected from the desert, and made permanent through casting.

A selection of prints from 2017 - 2023 including relief prints of found styrofoam on tyvek and paper, monotypes, cyanotypes, and other processes utilizing found objects.

These works consist of fragments of cans, buckets, bottles, signs and fence posts which have been altered through gilding in gold and copper.  These objects are artifacts of previous use which were discarded in the desert outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

As Above, So Below is an installation of cast bronze datura pods, and aluminum cast sphinx moth chrysalises hanging from monofilament. This was installed in Cross Pollination, a show curated by Valerie Roybal at 516 Arts in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Lines of Containment

Installation in American Domain, curated by Erin Elder, Museum of Capitalism, Oakland CA 2017

Fences and gates spread across the land in an act of containment and constriction, of occupation and ownership.  These enclosures serve as placeholders of wealth from which resources are expropriated.  Through the lens of capitalism, the land must be contained in order to be represented as a commodity. Gates serve only as an illusion of proprietorship, to be quickly rendered useless to those that dare trespass.  

This installation consists of several gates which were found damaged beyond use.  Once utilized as lines of containment upon the landscape, these gates are represented as frail artifacts of capitalist culture.   Suspended and painted white, the gates project shadows which form rigid linear compositions.  In this context, the damaged and useless gates leave us only with the illusory projection of the land as property.

This body of work centers around natural fuel resources and what is left behind in our quest for energy.  This consists of stumps, wood fragments, and deteriorating fences which were collected also from the Caja del Rio. 

The stumps collected range from pinion cut in the last decade, to junipers cut with an axe before the era of chainsaws.  These are coated in whitewash, which consists of lime, a product of limestone.  Whitewash serves to preserve wood from deterioration.  To whitewash is also meant to obscure an underlying dirty truth.  To be whitewashed could also refer to assimilation to a dominant white culture, that in the colonial push westward both land and culture were viewed as resources to be conquered and "civilized".  Whitewash in all of its contexts applies in this instance.  Removed from the earth, the whitewashed stumps take on a skeletal and ghostly appearance.  Once into a grid, they also begin to reference gravestones. 

Some of these stumps and wood fragments have also been preserved as metal castings, serving as permanent mementos to our consumption.  Timbers from fences and corrals have been utilized to reference the landscape of which they were intended to subdivide. 

As resources dwindle, more energy resources must be used in search of what remains of energy resources, contributing to an unsustainable cycle of consumption.  In the end, it will be what we leave behind in our quest for resources by which we will be remembered. 

This series of work is comprised of iron castings of obsolete technologies, from floppy disks and a VHS tape, to vintage video gaming systems.  These objects serve as fossils and fetishes of our technological culture.

The following works consist of cast tongues.  The Tower of Babble is a nearly 7ft stack of cast bronze tongues, referring to language and the Tower of Babel story.  Babble is a smaller segment cast in iron.  Babble in Blue is cast in plaster and painted with a gloss enamel.  Doublespeak is inspired by the increasingly Orwellian language propagated though our entertainment news media system. 

This body of work revolves around the role in which banking institutions play in violence, as represented through mediums such as pepper spray and the shotgun, and how this is legitimized though the deification of capital itself. It is all too evident in analyzing our current financial system that the god of greed reigns supreme. In doing so corporate symbolism becomes that of a sacred language, and the temples in which this is practiced being the bank. These objects serve as fetishes of the cult of capital.

At this time of shifting financial structures worldwide, one cannot escape the long arm of debt.  As consumers we borrow from a banking system which borrows from another banking system which borrows from borrowing, throwing everyone involved into a spiral of unsustainable debt.  The collapse which grows larger daily is due to the foundations of the structures giving way, or in many cases, not existing in the first place.  This abstracted system of debt and money represents real assets, such as homes, which in this case were seized by financial institutions by the millions throughout the last 4 years.  As of January of 2011 1 in 45 houses was in foreclosure, numbering 2,183,056 homes. 

This body of work examines the current economic fallout relating to the debt and housing crisis.  This ranges from small blocks of houses upon a foundation of debt, represented as the iconic credit card, to houses created entirely out of debt only standing as houses of cards in await of collapse. 

Small neighborhood structures, such as 89119, consist of Monopoly game houses cast from recycled zinc pennies, as since 1982 pennies consist primarily of zinc rather than copper. The zinc penny, which costs 1.4 cents to produce, is in reality worth  6/10 of a cent in raw material value. 

The Monopoly house itself brings to mind the winner takes all board game and its relationship to our current condition.  The structure of the neighborhoods, which are noted by numeric title, or zip code in this case, mimic satellite images of the heaviest affected zip codes within the US.  All of which rests upon a concrete foundation suspended from the ceiling, thus literally nothing underneath these structures and hanging from a string. 

An image that has recently invaded our consciousness are streets lined with foreclosure signs.  Thus what is to be done with such images?  In this instance I have decided to create shelter out of them.   In doing so, the energy and resources used for production of the marketing of property is redirected towards that of building shelter, a necessity for survival.

A site specific installation by Chris Collins and Jennifer Joseph at Launch Projects in Santa Fe, NM.

The following works stand alone as critiques of culture and society, and exist as unique objects, rather than existing within a larger body of work. 

The Truth in Sculpture serves as a commentary on what is truth in object and the representation of such, as through the terms set forth by Jacques Derrida in reference to a painting of shoes by Van Gogh.  This, being not only a re-presentation, but also a reproduction of form still falls short to that of truth.  The boots now rendered useless, at least from their intended use, can only serve us as symbol.  Symbol of both artist and artisan, and tool to product, as such boots are tools of the metal casting trade.  The medium refers back unto itself and its own creation, pointing to a new truth beyond that of utility and of art objects.

Santa Fe Scene is a found coyote skull gilded in 23K gold and speaks for itself..

Hey Mickey depicts the famous Mickey Mouse holding an oil drum, which points to the collusion between big entertainment and big business. 

Blast Bouquet consists of cast shot shell wads and muzzle loading sabots.  These serve in aiding the projectile or projectiles while leaving the barrel of a gun.  Originally plastic, these are recast into bronze and fabricated into what appears floral.  Thus the regenerative image of the flower from destructive force.

These works involve a playfulness of form and context that lies somewhere between the phallus and the mammary.  The form itself is derived from casting material into condoms.  Through process, the form inflates and brings about a new formal identity far from its original context.  These phallomammary forms are grouped together in most instances, suggesting organic growth, which create communal structures that support one another physically.  These objects are not intended to be defined, as in their creation definition is brought into question.

In this day of technological advancement, one is overwhelmed with the mechanisms of manipulation. Technology is moving faster than the machines that utilize such, thus creating a wasteland of obsolescent things. These things, once used to store information, turn on, and tune in only exist as empty visages of their own utility.

Upon our own obsolescence, it is these things that will be used to understand us as a culture, serving as hollow reliquaries containing an undecipherable language of past data. These machines serve as libraries of information sealed by their own devices. These obsolescence totems present themselves as fetishes to obsolescent technologies and obsolescent ideas to be deciphered in the future.

The following works are all cast from objects of scientific use.  These forms were discovered at the Black Hole, a salvage yard specializing in nuclear detritus from Los Alamos National Laboratory, home of the atom bomb.  The objects chosen consist of an odd measuring device, vacuum tubes, and insulators of different sizes.  These items were then re-cast in different materials and presented in cubic formations, as a reference to molecular structure.

Dividing, deconstructing, and restructuring, humankind has strived to contain nature.  The most common tool of containment is that of the fence or wall.  Within such rigid structures are organic material, shape, and form.  In these particular works, organic shapes and natural materials are displaced into the cold reality of the cube.