Chris Cran and Michael Wilding

Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to present Full Circle, an exhibition uniting the abstract explorations of painter Chris Cran and sculptor Michael Wilding. The show’s title references a return to the source – a loving nod to Cran and Wilding’s familial connection as the respective fathers of the gallery’s founders. 

With a career of stylistic forays into pop art, portraiture, social realism, and various graphic arts, Chris Cran returns to abstraction to capture the essence of play inherent to his practice. Across his body of work, Cran emphasizes the importance of engaging the viewer to feel the impact of his paintings, rather than seek to analyze or define their meaning. In addition to a base of flat black gesso, Cran often mixes silver oil paint into each of his pigments, creating new depths and textures by scratching, dabbing, dragging, and pulling the surface of his paint. Utilizing foam core, plastic, x-acto blades, and even Kleenex to experiment, each painting throughout Full Circle reveals the effect of luminescence and texture – with individual components shifting from light to dark, depending on the angle. In a constant search to explore the uninhibited intelligence of his own hand, Cran’s tactile brushstrokes beget a geometric swirl of fragments that toy with depth and perception. 

In a similar regard for explorative process, Michael Wilding’s smooth marble sculptures communicate the artist’s raw reverence for the ancient medium. Viewing his carving technique as an improvisational conversation with stone, Wilding’s practice works to excavate the elegance held within a single slab -- formed over the course of millions of years. In a journey to unearth unknown forms by subtracting extraneous material, Wilding fully immerses himself in responding to the emotional impact of each chisel. While his technical process is quite labor intensive and time consuming, the graceful purity of the works can make one feel otherwise; soft sloping curves meet crests of hard line, accentuating dimension through light and shadow. In addition to his carved stone works, placed throughout the gallery space, Wilding has included a selection of bronze casts, molded and patinated to varying effect. By putting marble and bronze in dialogue with one another, the artist emphasizes the significance of material in communicating the impact of a particular form, as well as the capabilities imbued within each approach. 

From metallic oil paints and foam core to marble and bronze, the dynamism of artistic forms grants tactility to the ineffable experience of beauty. Throughout Full Circle, Chris Cran and Michael Wilding play with depth and perception to create works imbued with a sense of fluidity and motion. Despite distinct differences, the two bodies of work celebrate the synchronous relationship between artists and their media – exhibiting a dynamic synthesis of labor, technique, curiosity, and intuition.