CHRIS ENGMAN

“My photographs are documentations of sculptures and installations, but they are also records of actions and elaborate processes. Days are spent, sometimes with a crew but more often in solitude, silently driving, carrying supplies, erecting structures and sets, and studying the slow progress of the sun overhead and its all-powerful, comfort-giving and taking effects. Created in close collaboration with the movements of the sun, precisely observed, I see my photographs as acts of reverence and participation in a deep, reassuring natural order outside of and much larger than myself.”

                                                                                                          — Chris Engman, September 2006

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles is very pleased to announce CHRIS ENGMAN: The Artist as Explorer—2002-2006, an exhibition of historical photographic works on view in the Project Space from September 17 through October 29, 2022. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, September 17, from 5:00 to 8:00 pm.  This is the artist’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Originally created by Chris Engman between 2002-2006, this is the first time this series of black and white photographs is being presented in Los Angeles. These works read differently now than when they were produced 15-20 years ago. Certainly, we have all become accustomed to images that lie more boldly or more insidiously, and as a result, the flaws in the illusions these works create will for some be more readily apparent in 2022. For Engman, however, a complete illusion is an uncompelling one—and he has always been more interested in the flaws than in the fooling. The flaws allow the viewer to enter the image and better understand the process behind it, which was conceived at the time by the artist as a performance.