Danger Play
work by Chris Abrams and Chris Frost
This exhibition explores battle and war in games and toys.
Opening Reception: Friday, April 1st 6-8:30pm
Show Dates (by appointment): March 28th - April 22nd
From our earliest days it seems, we are attracted to visuals of abstracted horror, the bloodless games of youth that reference an adult world of fear and death in foreign lands. Whether fighting with toy weapons or blowing up our own sandcastles, our fascination with destruction plays out on an aesthetic level.
By fortune of family, geography or time, many of us may never see the truly ugly up close. What we don’t know, we can try to comprehend or find catharsis in the cinematic violence mapped onto big screens and small.
With a truly global media diet and the potential to monetize every click, share, or retweet the twin tragedies of natural disaster and manmade violence (with their associated images) populate every news cycle, interspersed between the selfies and enviable plates of food. Streams of refugees, suicide bombers, spree shootings and tsunamis are as familiar to us as the faces of friends, their narrative arcs predictable and routine.
Chris Frost and Chris Abrams take the familiar elements of art and architecture, cast bronze and folded paper, to present us with sculptures rooted in violent turmoil, refigured as instances of aesthetic reflection and material craft. With the blood removed, the context clipped, we can look upon our connection to carnage and try to understand why we love it so.