Christian Rex Van Minnen - "Mourning Wood in Liminal Dawn"

From the artist:

"I am in a liminal space. It is disorienting and bewildering. I'm something, someone, somewhere in between the problem and the solution; the old and the new; asleep and #woke. I am in the darkness of individuation. It is the grieving part. The breaking down part. The humiliating part. Burning all away until what is left is a thin residue of a former self; Caput Mortuum. There is, however, an undeniable excitement about it all. It is sublime. It is an involuntary erection of the spirit. Mourning Wood in Liminal Dawn.

The paintings in this show, like the trickster, are symbolic of liminality itself. Simultaneously specific and ambiguous. The imagery in the work include themes of heads and beheading, phallus and orifice, whimsy and melancholy, fluorescence and gray, penetration and erection, sex and death, power and powerlessness. In part, I am responding to a cultural entreatment to examine heterosexual male identity. This process is a labyrinth of self-deceit, grief, hope and excitement. This work is an attempt to describe the feelings and ideas experienced in this liminal state in between what was and what is becoming. I am motivated by both fear and a desire to love more fully, and at times they seem like the same thing."

~ Christian Rex van Minnen

About the artist:

Christian Rex van Minnen was born in Providence, RI in 1980 and received his BA from Regis University, Denver in 2002. He has exhibited throughout the US and internationally and was recently awarded an Artist-in-Residence at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Aspen, CO (Fall, 2017). van Minnen is represented by Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles and Gallery Poulsen in Copenhagen, DK.

Recent exhibitions include con-figuration, a group exhibit at Postmasters, NY, Juxtapoz x Superflat, co-curated by Takashi Murakami & Evan Pricco at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada, and Enantiodromia a solo show at Gallery Poulsen in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Public Collections include: Denver Art Museum, Djurhuus Collection, The Christine & Andy Hall Collection, Colección Solo, and the Richard B. Sachs Collection. van Minnen currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.