Event Link: https://www.therourke.org/calendar.html
FEE: FREE and open to public to view.
Chris Mortenson: The Air, thin and eager like this.
Fri Apr 11th - Sun Jun 8th
Main-Gallery-Exhibit
The Rourke Art Gallery + Museum, 521 Main Ave, Moorhead, MN 56560, USA
Chris Mortenson is a fiscal year 2024 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts
and cultural heritage fund.
This activity is made possible by an allocation from The Longspur Prairie Fund at The Rourke.
The Air, thin and eager like this.
My work is driven by the need to understand my own connections to landscape and the relationships between cultural ideals of place and the use of the photographic imagery, which shapes and sustains how Americans think and talk about landscape. The work is rooted in the notion that, at its best, the photograph is a trace of reality, offering half-truths rather than being an authentic representation of what is inside the frame. Photographs tend to be a primary source of understanding about a place, conjuring ideas of the natural and unnatural, whether or not those representations are apt. The work I make questions the duality between our perceived notions of landscape and the realities of those landscapes, as well as the conflict felt within both natural and human-made landscapes.
The Air, thin and eager like this. is a survey of landscape through hunting and is comprised of both large color landscape photographs and portraits made using the palladium process. The practice of hunting is surrounded with emotions both for and against the killing of animals. It is often pointed to as an issue of sustainability and stewardship for the land as well as a positive economic force for rural communities for those who support it and as a bloodthirsty and unnecessary activity to those who oppose it. As a hunter who both enjoys hunting and dislikes the killing, I understand both of these arguments. This work is not an attempt to litigate those positions. It is an attempt to look at hunting as a method for understanding landscape and the conflicts it poses and what happens to the preconceived notions we have if what we are looking at doesn’t align with those ideas.
About the Artist
Chris Mortenson (b. 1979) is an artist and educator based in Moorhead, MN, where he is currently Associate Professor of Art at Concordia College. He has shown work work nationally and internationally at Coop Gallery in Nashville, TN; The Emergeandsee Media Arts Festival, Berlin, Germany; The Exhibition Hall, Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia; The Saarijärvi Museum, Central Finland; 5&J Gallery, Lubbock, TX; The Black Box Gallery, Portland, OR; and at South x Southeast Photogallery, Molena, GA, among others. He holds a BFA from The University of South Dakota and an MA and MFA from The University of Iowa.
