CHRIS NATROP : SILVER SUN AFTERGLOW

Film by Eric Minh Swenson.
After firmly establishing himself in the art scene in San Francisco with exhibitions at notable museums, galleries, and art centers, Chris Natrop moved to Los Angeles in 2006. He now brings his exquisite hand-cut paper installations back to San Francisco for his first solo exhibition at Nancy Toomey Fine Art.
As working with paper reaches its heyday in the art world, Natrop has proved himself a forerunner of the medium. He began cutting paper in 2001, after he was dissatisfied with a charcoal drawing he was working on. He began to cut the drawing apart directly on the wall, using a crude box-cutting knife which today remains his tool of choice. Executed free-form and exclusively with a knife, his process has evolved into a stream-of-consciousness drawing technique that has continued to evolve and develop. The methodical, repetitive unintentionality of his drawing process results in color washed paper forms that appear at once ethereal and organically chaotic. Shifting forms of pattern, shadow, and silhouette intertwine to become complex, unified landscapes. Agility and innovation combine to create delicate images of flora and fauna that immerse the viewer in a world wholly imagined yet entirely specific.
In Silver Sun Afterglow, Natrop transforms the gallery using hand cut paper with a range of painting color patterns and effects. These intricately cut paper silhouettes are a hybrid of natural and synthetic form-a loosely-faceted environment evolving within a fantastical trajectory. This exhibition responds to his obsession with post-apocalyptic sentiments, specifically his current disillusionment with water resources. The installation will take shape through an array of cut-paper formations: various ceiling-hung conglomerations, site-specific wall reliefs, and interrelated framed works. In his words, “Silver Sun Afterglow is an irrepressible tangle of life, a hybrid-world twisting and clinging to its sterile confines, a fractured landscape in the natural process of reconfiguration.”
Born in 1967 in Milwaukee, Chris Natrop grew up in Hartland, Wisconsin and relocated to California after receiving his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1992. After receiving his BFA in Chicago he was an affiliate artist at the Headland Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA. He has shown his work throughout the US and Europe and has recently completed a series of commissioned public sculptures in Dubai, China, Houston, and Los Angeles. In 2012 Natrop installed a temporary work in Terminal One of the Los Angeles International Airport, which was housed in an 18 foot glass case. In 2016 he completed site specific works for Facebook’s Playa Vista and Menlo Park campuses. Natrop is a recipient of several awards, including the Pulse Prize at Pulse New York, and is included in numerous public and private collections.
For more info on Eric Minh Swenson visit his website at thuvanarts.com. His art films can be seen at thuvanarts.com/take1
Eric Minh Swenson also covers the international art scene and his writings and photo essays can be seen at Huffington Post Arts : m.huffpost.com/...