Chris Curreri at Daniel Faria Gallery

Artist: Chris Curreri

Exhibition title: The Ventriloquist

Venue: Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto, Canada

Date: April 18 – June 1, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto

Daniel Faria Gallery is pleased to present Chris Curreri’s The Ventriloquist, a featured CONTACT Photography Festival exhibition and the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Chris Curreri’s work is premised on the idea that we constantly contend with things outside of ourselves – and perhaps most crucially, with other people. Considered in their entirety, these relationships create a network, a fabric within which we are enmeshed. To what extent, then, do we open ourselves to, or close ourselves off from this network? Using photography and sculpture, his exhibition The Ventriloquist constructs allegories for this question.

The exhibition’s central sculpture, titled Christopher, takes the form of a hand puppet enlarged to human scale. Its limp body hangs in anticipation of the hand that will enter it, highlighting that the boundaries of our bodies are defined by holes – the orifices that are our means of exchange with the world. In speaking, our mouth is the orifice through which we manifest ourselves in the world; in hearing, our ears are the holes through which the world impinges itself on us. Our bodily porousness enables us, but also renders us vulnerable. To be a body is to be penetrated.

An accompanying suite of photographs, titled Insomniac, depict the innards of various animals. Their wet fullness contrasts with the dry hollowness of the puppet. The spillage of guts implies a violent overflow from inside to outside, a transgression of borders that points to messy interrelations and complicates the puppet’s neutral or “indifferent” facial expression.

Chris Curreri is a Canadian artist who works with film, photography and sculpture. Recent exhibitions include: The Way We Are 1.0 at the Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst (Bremen, Germany), Sleeping with a Vengeance and Dreaming of a Life at Litost (Prague, Czech Republic), 2017 Canadian Biennial at National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Canada), Unruly Matter at Daniel Faria Gallery (Berlin, Germany/Toronto, Canada), La Biennale de Montréal 2016 at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Montréal, Canada), Compassionate Protocols at Callicoon Fine Arts (New York, USA), Central China International Ceramics Biennale at Henan Museum (Zhengzhou, China), So Be It at Gardiner Museum (Toronto, Canada), and Surplus Authors at Witte de With (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). His films have been screened at: Image Forum Festival, Japan; Festival Internacional de Cine de Mar del Plata, Argentina; and the Toronto International Film Festival, Canada. He holds an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College.

Chris Curreri, The Ventriloquist, 2019, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto

Chris Curreri, Insomniac, 2019, Chromogenic Print, 35.5” x 23.3” (image size), 37.25” x 25.25” (frame)

Chris Curreri, Insomniac, 2019, Chromogenic Print, 28” x 19” (image size), 29.5” x 20.25” (frame)

Chris Curreri, Insomniac, 2019, Chromogenic Print, 37.5” x 56.5” (image size), 39.5” x 58.5” (frame)

Chris Curreri, Insomniac, 2019, Chromogenic Print, 31” x 20.5” (image size), 32.5” x 22” (frame)

Chris Curreri, As is, 2019, Leather, metal, silicone, resin, Dimensions variable

Chris Curreri, The Ventriloquist, 2019, exhibition view, Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto

Chris Curreri, Bloom, 2019, Gelatin silver print, 13” x 9.5” (image size), 23” x 18.5” (frame)

Chris Curreri, Christopher, 2019, Silicone, resin, hair, fabric, 80” x 20” x 9”

Chris Curreri, The Ventriloquist, 2019, Silicone, resin, fabric, 58” x 24” x 36”