David B. Smith Gallery

Dealing less with the supernatural than the psychosomatic, Christopher Russell rouses ghosts. Within his scratched photographs, fractured glass panes, and hazy metallic paints, there are haunting recollections - the kind of outlier memories that plague our psyche well after childhood. Through a purposefully repressive fog, we habitually revisit the monsters of our innermost mentality, and find ourselves the protagonist of a lifelong plight - a cinematic tale evocatively illustrated by Russell's eerie ships and spectral trees. Like a folkloric odyssey into a cognitive web, his mixed-media works and installations traipse through places of fragility and wistfulness; evidence of the divine and unsettling encounters inherent to our complex mortality.

Russell received his M.F.A. from the Art Center College of Design (CA). In 2009, he produced a solo exhibition at the Hammer Museum. He has been featured in group exhibitions at the Tokyo Institute of Photography (Japan), The Norton Museum (West Palm Beach), Armory Center for the Arts (Los Angeles), White Columns (New York City), De Appel Arts Center (Netherlands) Oakland Museum (Oakland, CA), and LACMA among others. He has published numerous critical articles in addition to being a featured subject of positive review by the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Huffington Post, Artillery, Frieze, and ArtForum, among others. Russell is also known for his 'zine Bedwetter. His work is included in the collections of numerous institutions including the Brooklyn Museum; MCA-Chicago; MOCA, LA; M HKA, Antwerp; Rhode Island School of Design Museum; Hammer Museum; MFA, Houston; the Getty; and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; to name a few.