Three months ago I wrote (here and here) about my friend, Chris Chinn, and an amazing solo exhibition of his portraits. He is one of the most talented people I know and, along with his wife, Mae, who is an architect, is a key part of the art community that is the Hollywood Adventist Church.
Well, just last week he told me that his show, "On the Row," was reviewed in the current issue of Artweek.
Chris posted the review on his website and you can read it here. Here's a short excerpt. It's really a very profound review. I think I'm going to ask him if I can put one of his pieces on layaway...for like, 10 years!
Portraits of individuals, when they do their main job, contain their stories, residual evidence of their lives. In fulfilling the very highest historical function of portraiture, they also contain clues to the sitter’s economic status (usually elevated). What Chinn has undertaken with this project thus has profound sociopolitical foundations as well as psychological subtext. In paying attention to those to whom it is rarely paid, it is analogous to Gustave Courbet’s transgressive Stone Breakers (1849), considered brashly bohemian and inappropriate for lavishing that kind of technical finesse and dispassionate formal accomplishment on peasants doing manual labor. And so it resonated as a political statement and sparked a realist movement.
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