James Chronister

In the realization of his artwork, it seems that James Chronister (Montana, 1978) wanted to play with the fundamental technical notions of photography, albeit with the ultimate intention of creating a painting. In fact, But you left it all for me (2023) is not a photographic print as it might seem at first glance, but an image made in oil on a large linen canvas.

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James Chronister doesn’t paint landscapes. Well, not traditionally speaking. His richly detailed greyscale paintings sidestep expectations: absent are the sentimental vistas of yore, the Romantic visions of untouched land. Instead, this Montana-based artist depicts closeup fragments of densely forested scenery to investigate the boundaries between the organic and the artificial. Heavily altered photographs of local environments serve as the source material for Chronister’s photorealist paintings, which feature overwhelming arrays of plant life cast in ghostly, unnatural hues. Chronister negotiates earthly abundance within the limits of its representation: his use of analogue and digital techniques further warps these compressed, fractured views, disrupting a genre marked by soothing illustrations of wilderness.

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