Kunsthaus Baselland presents Christopher Orr: Light Shining Darkly an exhibition on view through 30 June 2013.
Christopher Orr belongs to the most impressive among contemporary painters. As the title Light Shining Darkly evokes, Orr’s paintings show locations and scenes where something seemingly mystical, supernatural, dark or sinister happens, or you, as the viewer, presage something like this may happen. An important source of information for his creative process proves to be his images archive, consisting of old magazines—especially National Geographic from the 1930s to the ’70s—and books. Orr also draws on the “old masters” of painting like Tiepolo, Vermeer, Bosch, Hals, van Eyck, Caravaggio and others. His passion for details in the works of his role models finds its way into his own paintings. He quotes, as it were, a certain selected point from the entire historical quote. His archive also includes thematic collections of images which are grouped, for example, into the scientific, the mystical or the spherical. The landscape scenes in which protagonists act are characterised by special lighting effects. Time and again it is the specific use of lighting effects, which at first glance give the motifs already a twist towards the uncanny. The way in which the human being is located in the landscape provides connecting factors for the philosophy of the sublime. In light of the unattainability and size of nature, humans feel small and overwhelmed.
Curator: Sabine Schaschl
Kunsthaus Baselland
St. Jakob-Strasse 170
CH-4132 Muttenz/Basel
www.kunsthausbaselland.ch