Christopher Carter

"In art, there are recurring images, obsessive symbols or conceptualized representations that are used as vehicles for a certain interpretation of the world. Such recurrences establish codes that allow the activation of symbolic levers of imagination or bring one’s experience and knowledge up-to-date through unusual - or common - associations. 

In a wide range of today’s art, this symbolic existentialist tendency inherited from expressionism and surrealism exists, which refers us, in addition to its poetics and its ways of representation, to the important questions of modernity: who are we in this post world war era, what is our ontological status in this contradictory reality. The work of Christopher Carter is placed in this labyrinth of the unknown, which opens when man enters in contact with objects, culture and the every idea of art.

One only has to look at Christopher’s art to see the intellectual origin of his ideas, and one can, if memory prevails, see images and hear messages from the pieces dating back to the1940s. Then art became a sharp instrument of social criticism, politics and critique of daily life. Each exhibition became a cultural discourse based on the political climate of the times. Christopher has indeed questioned the socio- cultural content of these years and in spite of his rough trajectory from the artistic utopia of those times has kept his vision of art as experimentation and investigation.

Enjoy this body of work presented in Bound 2008: The man, his work and his art as we continue the dialog the work encourages about war, peace, boundaries and what the nationhood means when seen through the lens of our/your flag." (Content submitted by Rosie Gordon-Wallace May 2003)