CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions is pleased to announce Irresistible Deception, a solo exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Los Angeles-based artist Chris Fallon, on view at CULT’s new home, located within Yves Behar’s fuseproject (1401 16th St., San Francisco). The exhibition runs through December 11, 2021. Irresistible Deception is Fallon’s first solo presentation with CULT.

In this new body of work, Fallon — known for his striking images of ambiguous figures that both draw on and challenge existing traditions of portraiture — explores how the practice of collecting shapes the fashioning of domestic space. From the most lavish to the most impoverished of circumstances, the spaces of human habitation take form through the amassing of objects.

Beyond the functional value of the objects we amass, collecting might serve a variety of unconscious purposes: exhibiting a material archive of wealth, documenting travel and performing worldliness, creating a narrative of personal achievement, or attempting to craft an aesthetic sensibility ultimately tied to norms of gender, class, racial, religious, or national identity.

Fallon observes that collecting is a quotidian activity that appears practical but also evinces a form of compulsion or drive. In his paintings, human-like figures share space with the objects that come to define them — collections of memorabilia, cars, books, religious iconography, botanicals or art. Often the human figures recede into the background, ceding the space to representations in different registers: masks, sculptures, trophies, mirrors and paintings within the painting.

CURATORIAL STATEMENT - by Aimee Friberg and Damon Young

In preparation for the exhibition, Fallon delved into the psychology of collecting, drawing on US iconography while illuminating the strangeness — and the queerness — of its constitutive image-repertoire. Human figures in Fallon’s paintings are relatively flat, while objects and plants are rendered with detailed definition. His painting style references formal portraiture and classical painting as well as cartoons and other so-called lowbrow art forms, positioning his work in an uneasy middle ground. The tone of the works veers between humor, emotional intensity and nightmarishness. While the paintings draw on familiar images, they translate them into a unique pictorial space that upends expectations and leaves the viewer unsettled.

In his exploration of formal strategies of portraiture, Fallon’s work also challenges American notions of masculinity and femininity as perpetuated by Old Hollywood, advertising and other forms of media. His non-binary figures hover in a liminal zone beyond the gendered archetypes that have shaped the history of American domesticity. Additionally, the works allude to the colonial heritage of collecting represented in the work through the inclusion of “ethnic” masks on the walls of his imaginary figures’ spaces. While the works proliferate meanings, ultimately they create a dreamspace that might appear as the nightmare of our historical present or a vision of a world that hovers just beyond the threshold of perception.

“Last Looks”, 2021, Acrylic on wood panel, 48 x 60 inches

“The Night Gardeners”, 2021, Acrylic on wood panel, 60 x 48 inches

“Back Room”, 2021, Acrylic on wood panel, 48 x 60 inches

Thoughts on the Exhibition by Chris Fallon:

The human compulsion to collect things is fascinating to me. The inanimate stuff we amass communicates so much about our constructed personalities and aspirational selves. For this series I imagined what types of spaces my human figures occupied and what they’d assembled around them. A classical Greek bust on a mantle might be intended to transmit sophistication and worldliness, but to me there’s a tragicomedy inherent to that posturing. The specific objects I depict might be culled from pop culture, product brand imagery or ancient art, all of which put equally strong stamps on the collective psyche. I see no real hierarchy between objects because, unless they have practical uses, their value is merely a mutually agreed upon construct.

My use of bright, saturated colors and certain iconographic choices comes partly from formative years spent as a white American kid in southern Mexico in a family that avidly collected folk art, pottery, antique saint statues, textiles, etc. There’s an implicit fetishism and appropriation when white people collect artifacts of other cultures, which is where the issue of colonialism creeps in. My apple hasn’t fallen so far from the tree in this regard. I’m a collector too, and some of the objects in my own home might spark their own debates about propriety.

Vanity is another theme I play around with a lot, which manifests in the idiosyncratic way I render bodies and facial features. The hair might be right out of a shampoo commercial, but the skewed mouths, square noses and beady little eyes are nullifying. Part of me will forever be a teenager obsessed with underground comics and bathroom jokes, so I take care not to make my paintings overly didactic or self-serious. Behind the humor there’s a darker space in this show that I hope the viewer finds. Look behind our carefully crafted collections and presentations and you might find something a bit unsettling.

“Anointing The Thing (Nefertiti)”, 2021, Watercolor on paper, 24 x 18 inches, photo by Wyatt Hall

“And the Rock Was Christ”, 2021, Acrylic on wood panel, 24 x 24 inches

“Anointing The Thing (Peruvian Plant Deity),” 2021, Watercolor on paper, 24 x 18 inches, photo by Wyatt Hall

Irresistible Deception will be on view at CULT’s new home, located within Yves Behar’s fuseproject (1401 16th St., San Francisco), through December 11, 2021.

Introduction and all images courtesy of the artist and CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions

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ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Chris Fallon (b. 1976, Princeton, N.J.) spent his formative years in Texas, Mexico, Massachusetts, New York and San Francisco. He has presented solo exhibitions at Percy Gallery, Oakland; Partisan Gallery, San Francisco; Park Life Gallery, San Francisco and was included in “Sun Kissed Chokehold,” a group show curated by Laura Watters and Kaylie Schiff at Y53, Los Angeles and “Janus,” a group show at CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco. He exhibited work at the 2020 Spring/Break Art Show, Los Angeles. His work is represented in the public collections of the Los Angeles Contemporary Archives and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.