House Head, 2009; Red Man/Black Cartoon, 1990; Awake, 2009
Award-winning Canadian artist Chris Cran has his work displayed in private and public collections all over the world, and it's easy to see why.
His painted work — which he has been creating prolifically for the last 40 years — takes traditional art genres and turns them on their head. Still-life, portraiture and landscape works suddenly become oversized, avant-garde works of brilliance.
The artist is clearly drawn to the Pop and Modernest movements which he uses to portray history in a pop-culture context that can be both hilarious and unsettling at the same time.
Self-Portrait Just Two Maos Down from some Guy With a Goddamned Tea Cosy On His Head, 1985; Self-Portrait Watching a Man about to Shoot Himself In The Foot, 1985
In 1989, Cran began his Stripe Paintings series where he used a stencilling technique to draw lines on images that he had taken from magazines, art history, and advertising. He also integrated half-tone tones in the imagery as well.
The process for each work involved blowing the images up from their half-inch scale to over nine feet in some cases. Though paintings, they look almost like pixelated photos that have become grainy because they have been enlarged larger than their resolution allowed.
Large Orange Laughing Woman, 1991; Large Green Laughing Man, 1990; Large Pink Laughing Man, 1991; Large Green Woman, 1991
Large Orange Laughing Woman, 1991
Large Green Woman, 1991
Smoker, 1989
Hand Gesture, 1992; Hand Gesture #6 (OK), 1992
