Chris Hirson

At first impression, Chris Hirson's portraiture appears irreverent and

desperate, but look further and you see the depth of an artist drawing on a number of historical aesthetic traditions.

Combining the duality of traditional imagery with elements of fantasy, Hirson creates contemporary art portraiture in distorted human forms blending the realistic with the absurd, often challenging traditional notions of beauty and identity.

Initially, the figures in his portraits appear cold and emotionless, but soon reveal a hidden depth and complexity, each evoking contradictory emotions. Beneath their stark poses, their partial nakedness and ambiguous yet fixed stares that emanate an aura of a dream-like reality, anxiety and distant eroticism, with the diffusion of male and female identity in what seems to be an interplay between life and death.

Hirson creates images that draw on his love of the natural world with the outwarding characterics of the fantastical . . . they meet the spectator with challenging glances in a setting both real and other-worldly. At the basis, his works represent images of people from his daily life coupled with the sensory perception of influences as diverse as ancient Egyptian art, early Dutch Renaissance and German Expressionism artforms to the dioramas found in natural history museums around the world beginning with those culled from memories of his up-bringing in New York City and trips to the Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art to his present life in Berlin, Germany.

Chris Hirson was born in New York City in 1955. He studied Art and Literature at Hunter College New York City and the Art Students League New York City. He lives and works primarily in Berlin, Germany.

1980 - 1990 Early Works

1990 - 2000 Pretty Nice People (or The Family of Our Minds)

2000 - 2019 Party People. People and Friends of Berlin in the Wild East

2019 - Present Garden Delights...inspired by the work of Bosch.

On-going Projects:

Lessons From Lives

people and their lives and what they learned from it all. in book and film form

I Escaped

tales of danger and romance, treasure and excess, rescue and revenge, fear and fun.

Our Present

inspired by the TAT psychological testing which asks the viewer to invent a story.

My Thoughts