CHRIS SOLLARS: PRESS


 
2023  
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EGZOZ - Smoking Jacket LP (Object Records)
Thoughts Words Action - Djordje Miladinović
August 9, 2023

EGZOZ’s debut full-length album, “Smoking Jacket,” offers a captivating and immersive listening experience. With the infusion of various music genres and a nod to the past while simultaneously maintaining a contemporary sound, “Smoking Jacket” is a remarkable addition to the post-punk scene. Divided into two sides, “Gündüz” (daytime) and “Gece” (nighttime), the album explores various themes and emotions. Each side offers a profoundly detailed sound that will satisfy even the pickiest listeners. One of the defining aspects of “Smoking Jacket” is EGZOZ’s ability to seamlessly blend different music genres. While the foundation of their sound lies in post-punk, listeners will also notice elements borrowed from classic punk rock, art punk, garage punk, and garage rock. This eclectic blend of influences adds depth and complexity to their music, making it a truly unique listening experience.

   
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$ollar$ - LP (Object Records)
Thoughts Words Action - Djordje Miladinović
September 7, 2023

$ollar$, the self-titled debut album by Chris Sollars’ solo project, is a sonic masterpiece that seamlessly blends a myriad of genres such as noise rock, psych rock, art rock, art-punk, post-punk, grunge, alternative, experimental, and avant-garde music. With an impressive range of musical contributions including drums, electronic beats, synths, guitars, vocals, and artwork, $ollar$ showcases Chris Sollars’ DIY approach to music, resulting in an album that offers a unique and immersive listening experience. At its core, $ollar$ captivates listeners with its ability to effortlessly traverse various musical landscapes. The album’s strength lies in its ability to cleverly combine elements of noise rock, psych rock, and art punk, resulting in a sound that is both familiar and refreshingly innovative. Each composition is a testament to Sollars’ attention to detail, as he weaves together rhythmic structures, electronic beats, synth maneuvers, and experimental ambiances.

   
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Skullture - LP (Object Records)
Thoughts Words Action - Djordje Miladinović
September 7, 2023

Skullture‘s self-titled album is a remarkable dive into the world of noise rock, showcasing the immense talent of the San Francisco/Montana duo, consisting of Chris Sollars on drums and vocals, and Lee Lavy on guitars and vocals. The album not only embraces the essence of noise rock but also seamlessly incorporates elements from complementary genres such as post-punk, art punk, garage rock, and experimental music. The result is a powerful, heavy, and aggressive ambiance that will captivate the true noise rock enthusiasts. One of the standout aspects of this album is the profoundly energetic drumming performance by Chris Sollars. His mastery of the drums is evident throughout the record, as he employs well-accentuated beats, breaks, fills, and percussive acrobatics to drive each track with unrelenting intensity. Every strike of the drum creates a palpable impact, enhancing the overall sonic experience and adding to the album’s raw, primal energy..

   
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EGZOZ - Smoking Jacket Video Release
Thoughts Words Action - Djordje Miladinović
September 7, 2023

EGZOZ’s GZOZ released a video for a title track from their debut full-length, Smoking Jacket, released on vinyl via Object Records on May 31st, 2023.

The album’s artwork prominently features a tailored smoking jacket made from a scanned and enlarged cigarette pack, designed by Sollars and worn by the band and models. The photoshoot became the music video for Smoking Jacket. 

   
   
   
2022  
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Gate 27 - Chris Sollars VIDEO
Istanbul
Sept 20 - Dec 1, 2021

At Gate 27, I worked with the interplay between Symbols <> Cymbals as a framework for integrating sculpture, sound, and video to be activated and played by friends and viewers. My process consisted of walks exploring Istanbul and the more I walked repeating motifs of cats, circles, cigarettes became the subject for videos & collecting objects (rebar, tools, sac pans, and güğüm) became the trajectory for sculpture & percussive instruments.

   
2021  
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Gate 27 - Chris Sollars
Istanbul
Sept 20 - Dec 1, 2021

At Gate 27, I worked with the interplay between Symbols <> Cymbals as a framework for integrating sculpture, sound, and video to be activated and played by friends and viewers. My process consisted of walks exploring Istanbul and the more I walked repeating motifs of cats, circles, cigarettes became the subject for videos & collecting objects (rebar, tools, sac pans, and güğüm) became the trajectory for sculpture & percussive instruments.

   
2018  
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Internet Archive's 2018 Artist in Residence Exhibition VIDEO
Ever Gold [Projects]
July 14 - Aug 11, 2018

As a nod to the 1960’s Bay Area’s psychedelic and electronic explorations, Sollars will be sourcing the Internet Archive’s psychedelic screen savers, live recordings of the Grateful Dead, and psychotropic literature while utilizing “slow movement” methods of pickling and preserving for handling data.

   
2017  
lemon

Jewish Folktales Retold Artist Portrait Chris Sollars
Contemporary Jewish Museum Aug 2017

Presented in conjunction with Jewish Folktales Retold: Artist as Maggid, on view Sep 28, 2017–Jan 28, 2018 at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco.
   
lemon

Artists Create Treasure from Trash
SF/ARTS By Sura Wood Jan 2017

   
2016  
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DAAAM: Chico State University Art Gallery
Kelly Lindner:
November 3 - December 15, 2016

Exhibition Brochure and essay by Jacki Headley Gallery Director Kelly Lindner.
   
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Hoof & Foot: A Field Study, Chris Sollars at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California, Davis
SFAQ December 13, 2016



Now on view at the newly opened Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at the University of California, Davis, HOOF & FOOT: a field study is a video installation by Bay Area artist Chris Sollars. Drawing on the interactions of students and animals on the campus of UC Davis, home to a world renowned school of veterinary medicine, Sollars engaged UC Davis faculty and students in exploratory conversations regarding the body, socialization, and the confrontation of conflict. For the resultant video installation, Sollars has paired actions by humans and animals, drawing correlations between observable behaviors and movements.

   
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Artist Chris Sollars: DAAAM
By Weekend Showcase North State Public Radio: November 18, 2016

We also talk with artist Chris Sollars about his exhibit in the University Art Gallery at Chico State. The exhibit showcases Sollars' sculptures & performance-art videos including "Daaam" which documents the artist's trek from Oroville Dam to downtown Oroville -- while he was dressed as a tree to highlight drought & environmental issues.
   
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UC Davis’ new Shrem Museum of Art still finding its feet
By Charles Desmarais SF Chronicle: November 13, 2016

Also on view, “Hoof & Foot: A Field Study” by Chris Sollars, is a witty video installation that draws visual analogies among the animals, four-legged and two, of the UC Davis campus.
   
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Nature is absurd: Water dams, and the drought flow through new university exhibit
By Carey Wilson Chico News Review: November 10, 2016

Bay Area artist Chris Sollars brings imagination and humor into play across his multimedia exhibit, DAAAM, currently on display at Chico State’s Jacki Headley University Art Gallery.

For instance, Sollars creates sculptures by combining found objects, such as a rusted jerry-can topped by a weathered piece of Lake Oroville driftwood for “Pour.” For another piece, “Fake Lake,” he cut a map-like shape of Lake Oroville from a piece of plywood set into the top of an old wheelbarrow filled with water from that lake.

 

   
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Get Optimistic with Grand Opening of the Manetti Shrem Museum
By Sarah Hotchkiss KQED Arts: November 8, 2016

On the contemporary side, San Francisco-based artist Chris Sollars contributes a video installation to the new museum, titled Hoof & Foot: A Field Study, in honor of the university’s hoofed residents (subjects of the agricultural and veterinary programs) — and the humans who study them.
   
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Artist Talk: Chris Sollars’ DAAAM gallery
By Jae Siqueiros - Artist Talk Chico State November 06, 2016

San Francisco based artist Chris Sollars, opened a new exhibit entitled “DAAAM” in the University Art Gallery on Thursday. Students, staff and community members were invited to listen to Sollars talk about the new exhibit and ask questions.
   
   
2015  
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Recology AIR Chris Sollars: Castaways
By Dana Hemenway Curiously Direct: September 23, 2015


A playful yet poignant showing by Sollars for his culminating exhibition after being in residence at Recology, which requires use of only discarded materials. Sollars presents five videos with accompany props, scenes and costumes. Dystopic futuristic worlds are built out of chance encounters with other peoples' waste, yet despite the built-in happenstance (what will come out of that trash pile??) overall themes emerge. For example, a video viewed through a pair of snorkel goggles---embedded in blue plastic bins, shows Sollars as a diver as he jumps into blue recycling bin and then cuts to POV shots of Sollars ‘swimming’ through a sea of blue colored plastic waste---could easily be a PSA, and perhaps that is why I enjoyed it so much.
   
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Bay Area Artists Dive into the Big Blue
By Sarah Hotchkiss KQED Arts: August 31, 2015

Multimedia artist Chris Sollars has long engaged with the watery edges of San Francisco, but nowhere so completely as in his 2013 solo show at Steven Wolf Fine Arts, The Swimmer. Works in the delightfully-deadpan exhibit included barnacle-encrusted objects, documentation of Sollars walking the entire San Francisco coastline from Candlestick Point to Ocean Beach and a video inspired by John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer,” in which Sollars traverses the city via bodies of water, from public swimming pool to dinky plaza fountain.
   
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Instead of Changing Leaves, Peep Eight Bay Area Art Shows this Fall
By Sarah Hotchkiss KQED Arts: August 25, 2015


After four months of scavenging materials from the Recology dump, resident artists Jenny Odell, Chris Sollars and student artist Roger Ourthiage Jr. present three solo exhibitions over the course of one weekend. Odell’s The Bureau of Suspended Objects, a fictional archive of things once used, now discarded, includes scanable QR codes, collages and information gathered by the artist on each object. For Sollars’ Castaways, scavenged material becomes props and backdrops for video works, with the artist acting as playful protagonist.
   
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Q&A with new studio art professor Chris Sollars
By Grace Forrest The Campanil October 15, 2015


Mills College welcomed Chris Sollars as the new assistant professor of studio art in the Fall of 2015. Sollars’ work is described on his website as “the reclamation and subversion of public space through interventions and performance.” Documented through photography and video, his work is then turned into mixed media installations.
   
   
 
2014  
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Two Walks: Re-enacting Rivers and Exploding Farms
By Jason Graves Open Humanities Press: Feedback August 22, 2014

The art of walking is often a melancholy one. Its slowness breeds languid reveries, intense brooding, and earthbound ponderings that can tend toward a state of paralysis. However, art walks are typically anything but lethargic. Two (un)related walks conveniently bookended my summer: a river walk and a campus walk. Both probed the relation between memory and landscape: one, on the summer solstice, retraced the course of San Francisco’s undergrounded Mission Creek from source to sea, while another meandered around the legendary UCSC Farm and was punctuated with somewhat extemporaneous presentations by current and former apprentices.
   
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What We Overlook Remains:
Notes on Chris Sollars’ Islais Creek Walk

By John Graham San Francisco 2014

On a recent weekend, I joined up with artist Chris Sollars and about thirty
others—three of whom were his assistants—as we walked the historic
route of Islais Creek, from its origins in Glen Canyon (often called the last
wild canyon in the city of San Francisco) all the way to the bay where the
creek finishes out.
   
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Off Shore: Finding City Waterways in Unexpected Places
By Laura Jaye Cramer for SF Weekly May 30 2014

Local artist Chris Sollars has been investigating the outdoors for years. In 1997 he started taking his work out of the studio and putting in into the streets in an effort to have art within a real space. He's worked in sculpture, performance, video, and, unexpectedly, water. He even says that he's swam across San Francisco, from the bay to the ocean, through a network of pools and fountains. Not entirely sure how that works, but intrigued? So was Southern Exposure, the gallery who invited Sollars to be a part of their summer series, Off Shore.
   
   
2013  
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REVIEW: “The Swimmer” solo exhibition by Chris Sollars
By Kathryn McKinney for SFAQ November 2013

“The Swimmer,” Chris Sollars’s first solo show for Steven Wolf Fine Arts, features photos, videos and sculpture, all in homage to the San Francisco coastline, and its duality of water, Ocean and Bay, that shape the city. The sculptures in the show are all pulled from these shores; shopping carts, bikes, 40 oz bottles and cinderblocks meticulously cleaned to exhibit the saltwater’s own addition–colonies of barnacles living on our trash, like so many low rent tenants filling in the converted studios and improvised accommodations of coveted real estate, only to be yanked up and out, evicted by the fate of their discovery.
   
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Behold the Mission's Sea-Sourced Fixed Gear Barnacle Bicycle
By Kevin Montgomery Uptown Almanac Nov 13 2013

But one local Mission artist is reviving the lost art of "custom builds" via a bike frame reclaimed from the Bay. Chris Sollars of 667Shotwell explains how this gruesome shipwreck in the making came to be:
   
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Bicycle encrusted with SF Bay barnacles in Chris Sollars' "The Swimmer"
By John Angelico SFChronicle / SFGATE Nov 20 2013

Inspiration can come from many places, and in Sollars’ case it came from San Francisco Bay. As in literally from the bay: He dragged something from the water and used it in his work. The thing he dragged out was a bicycle frame, beautifully encrusted with barnacles. It was being kept in Davy Jones’ bicycle locker, apparently.
   
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Steven Wolf Fine Arts: Chris Sollars - The Swimmer
By Anneliese Vobis for Art Business SF 2013

Sollars' sculptural practice overlaps with photography, video, collage and installation work. The Swimmer reflects on journeys and investigations along the Pacific coast. Story telling and altered sculptural objects constrast clean, geometrical driven video work. Both directions melt together and weave a narrative in Robert Smithson style.
   
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Left Behind
Published by Publication Studio 2013

Chris Sollars' new book, LEFT BEHIND, shows us work from his ongoing public sculpture series. Sollars' sculptures, made from discarded objects in the streets of San Francisco, reveal a playful sensibility. Included in LEFT BEHIND is an interview conducted by Jennifer González of the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York. Chris Sollars is an artist based in San Francisco and received a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship. BUY IT HERE
   
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Sollars' The Swimmer Trailer
released on The Swimmer Blu Ray Re-Release
GrindhouseReleasing 2013

Chris Sollars' The Swimmer Trailer is released as an easter egg hidden feature on the Blu-Ray re-release of The Swimmer starring Burt Lancaster.
   
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Chris Sollars: An Appreciation of the In-Between
By Jasmine Moorehead for SFAQ May-July 2013

From the beginning, Sollars’ video art has been ambulatory. In his very first video piece from 1997, the artist records himself as he wheels a bucket full of soapy water around the city, picking up trash off the street, washing it, then carefully replacing the trash as he found it.
   
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Chris Sollars on the Need for Humor in Art
By Jonathan Curiel for SF Weekly May 13, 2013

Shaving his beard with an axe. Washing trash in the street. Chris Sollars does the strangest things for the sake of art, but they work. Sollars has exhibited his video, photography and sculpture projects around the United States -- including at SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts & last month was awarded a prestigious grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
   
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Humor & Perspective
By Simone Solondz for Our RISD May 9, 2013

For San Francisco-based performance artist Chris Sollars 98 SC, winning a 2013 Guggenheim fellowship means spending less time teaching and more time focusing on his own projects. Since his days in the RISD Sculpture department, his work has centered around street performance documented with video. “I started doing performances because I wanted a direct and immediate encounter with the public,” he says.
   
2012  
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Feature: An Interview with Chris Sollars
By Max Karnig for JUXTAPOZ 5.15.2012

Karnig: What are your inspirations? Sollars: The street and the immediate space around me influences my ideas directly. My work takes inspiration from a range of art from Bruegel & Durer, to Duchamp to the Diggers & Yippies; Fischli/Weiss, Gordon Matta-Clark, Nauman, Chris Burden, David Hammons, Ana Mendieta, Paul McCarthy. Pipilotti Rist, Kim Jones, Acconci, Adrian Piper, Kaprow, Paul Kos, Bruce Conner and other 60 & 70s artists: that showed or made their work within the world / public spaces immediately within everyday life and often using their body as material. All my early videos in the street of performances are also influenced by Skate videos I grew up watching in the mid 80's to early 90's.
   
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Hang Your Hat: an artwalk through home galleries
By Christy Chan for Bold Italic 1.9.2012

Chris Sollars is a Mission-based artist whose work was picked for both the SFMOMA SECA Award and YBCA’s Bay Area Now show. He started his gallery as a response to the disappearing art spaces in San Francisco during the dot-com boom. The first event was A Site Launch in 2001, parodying the extravagant tech parties of the 1990s.
   
2011  
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Hairy: An Interview with Chris Sollars
By Danielle Sommer for Daily Serving 7.28.2011

For the last year, Bay Area artist Chris Sollars has sported a biblical behemoth of a beard, although his cleanly shaven cheeks are once again on view in Sollars’s newest project, Hairy, on view as part of YBCA’s Bay Area Now. It’s an interesting update on an identity-probing lineage that includes predecessors like Chris Burden, Gordon Matta Clark, James Luna, Ana Mendieta, and David Hammons. DailyServing recently had the opportunity to chat with Chris about the work.
   
Positive Tax

Project Space: Chris Sollars
...might be good issue #174 (fluent collab)
July 9 - Sept 25, 2011


For …might be good, Sollars presents a series of works from 1980-2040 juxtaposing time, physical and social space..

   
shave

TRASH: Play-Fill
By New Children's Museum

Through humorous interventions and performances, Chris Sollars calls attention to the things we throw away. Rather than telling the viewer what to think about trash, Sollars’s goal is to stimulate curiosity as a way of encouraging us to rethink the everyday world and consider the importance of the invisible and overlooked. In Play-Fill, Sollars creates a situation in which visitors are asked to think about the world from the perspective of a piece of trash. By refocusing our point of view, Sollars spotlights a critical topic we would rather ignore and makes it personal.
   
shave

Turning Trash Into Art
By Angela Corone
KPBS San Diego &
PBS Newshour Art Beat

And garbage bags can come to life, as in artist Chris Sollars' work. Sollars' installation "Playfill" includes a video of walking trash bags. Teagle explains:Chris has asked kids to pretend that they’re a piece of trash...
   
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Trash: Fun for Kids at The New Children's Museum
NBC San Diego

A new exhibit at the New Children's Museum will make you think twice before taking out the garbage. Trash is an exhibition designed to empower kids to be agents of change in their households. Teagle explains:Chris has asked kids to pretend that they’re a piece of trash...
   
shave

Around the Nation: Turning Trash Into Art
By Saskia De Melker & Angela Corone
PBS Newshour Art Beat

And garbage bags can come to life, as in artist Chris Sollars' work. Sollars' installation "Playfill" includes a video of walking trash bags. Teagle explains:Chris has asked kids to pretend that they’re a piece of trash...
   
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Bay Area Now 6
By Leigh Markopoulos
Art Practical - Issue 2.22 / Summer Reading

There were a number of artworks that I found interesting, such as Tammy Rae Carland’s staged photographs of stand-up comediennes in comic repose; Ben Venom’s outsize Medusa-head quilt fashioned from heavy metal paraphernalia; and Chris Sollars’ refreshingly bizarre and hirsute multimedia installation, to name a few.
   
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Bay Area Now 6
By Jonathan Curiel
SFWeekly - August 17, 2011

Sollars is a kind of clown prince, going for laughs and provocation with his hair-themed art, including a video that has him rubbing his long beard against an ax and removing odd objects (toy baby, Star Wars figure, earbuds, lighter) from inside his brown chin follicles.
   
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Bay Area Now 6 @ YBCA
By Rachel Clarke
Square Cylinder - August 11, 2011

Chris Sollars’ multi-channel performance/video installation, Hairy, is about hair—more specifically his hairiness and eventual hairlessness—and veers between offbeat humor and unsettling violence; it ends with an almost ritualistic, bloody beard purging in the woods with an axe blade.
   
shave

Bay Area Now 6 @ YBCA
By Jonathon Curiel
SFWeekly - August 17, 2011

Sollars is a kind of clown prince, going for laughs and provocation with hi hair-themed art, including a video that has him rubbing his long beard against an ax and removing odd objects (toy baby, Star Wars figure, earbuds, lighter) from inside his brown chin collicles. At YBCA, glass heads display the actual beard and long Jesuslike locks that once adorned Sollars' face.
   
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Wax On
by Jennifer Maerz - The Bold Italic - July 28, 2011

There are a lot of great artists showing at YBCA's BAN6 showcase, but I found it really hard to pull myself away from Chris Sollars' Hairy exhibit. This Saturday Chris celebrates the art of "unruly facial hair" with a live event that features something that goes well with beards in this town — drinking whiskey! Between 5 and 7 p.m., you can get the growth on your mug sculpted, trimmed, and otherwise perfected while sipping brown booze cocktails crafted by Comstock Saloon.
   
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Hairy Men and Hard Alcohol
Whiskey Waxing at the YBCA
by Walter Green - The Bay Citizen - August 1 2011

Drawing Crowds bravely waded into a gathering of hirsute men (and the people who love them) having their facial hair massaged into wacky shapes as part of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Whiskey Waxing event, designed to accompany the ongoing exhibit, Bay Area Now 6.
   
arthurallan

Isn't It Obvious
by Mary Anne Kluth
March 20, 2011 2.14 Art Practical


Two segments in particular point to a critical aspect of Arthur/Allan’s reflexive process. Books by Allan on Arthur and Books by Arthur on Allan show the duo in a library, stacking books and fitting the namesake criteria on one another’s bodies. While the activity is schoolboy unruliness, as a metaphor, it enacts the reciprocal attention and validation that bolsters good ol’ boy networks and gray area ethics possible in any system of power.

   
arthurallan

"Isn't It Obvious?"
by Mary Eisenhart
Jan 20, 2011 SF Chronicle


Curator Aimee Le Duc gathers photos, videos, performance and installations by local artists - Matthew Kennedy, Kristina Lewis, Jasmin Lim, Brion Nuda Rosch, Chris Sollars and Lindsey White - examining the common, the ordinary, the banal.

   
arthurallan

Ordinary Sublime
By Heidi De Vries
Jan 12, 2011 SF Weekly


Meanwhile, tricksters Brian Nuda Rosch and Chris Sollars have given themselves the official-sounding name Arthur/Allan for their project as they investigate San Francisco civic buildings. They play with the idea of unoccupied space in the city through a series of humorous actions they share in the show.

   
arthurallan

Is It Obvious?
essay by Zachary Royer Scholz
SF Arts Commission Gallery


Viewers may not be willing to jump until they no longer can, like Matthew Kennedy in Jumping, 2010; use their bodies as bookshelves, like the collaborative Arthur/Allan in one of their videos from City Hall, 2011; or edit video down to its best moments, like Lindsey White in Common Senses, 2009-11; but they could if they wanted to.

 
 
2010
arthurallan

Chris Sollars talk on Bruce Nauman's
Wax Impressions of the Knees of Five Famous Artists
in 75 Reasons to Live

SFMOMA
Jan 17 2010 1:30 PM


We invited 75 people from the Bay Area creative community with a passion for artworks in SFMOMA's collection to tell us about their favorites in 75 7.5-minute talks spread over three days.

   
arthurallan

Chris Sollars
REVIEW by Jeff Hamada
12.11.10 BOOOOOOOM!


This summer Brion Nuda Rosch invited Chris Sollars to the SFMOMA to make works using only materials found within the museum. At no point were museum staff made aware of Sollar’s “residency”.

   
arthurallan

Secret, Hidden Art At SFMOMA
11.12.10 Huffington Post

We applaud low cost-high concept art. This past summer at SFMOMA, artist and curator Brion Nuda Rosch invited Chris Sollars to use SFMOMA as a site for art-making. The one catch? the artist had to use materials on hand in the museum itself, from paper products, posters, bottles, debris left behind, to the shirt off his back.

   
arthurallan

Chris Sollars' SFMOMA Residency that the staff didn't know about
11.12.10 Juxtapose

We applaud low cost-high concept art. This past summer at SFMOMA, artist and curator Brion Nuda Rosch invited Chris Sollars to use SFMOMA as a site for art-making. The one catch? the artist had to use materials on hand in the museum itself, from paper products, posters, bottles, debris left behind, to the shirt off his back. .

   
arthurallan

Visible Alternatives, Part 4
by Christian L. Frock
10.13.10 Art Practical


G: Guerrilla
Guerilla: Rosch, Brion Nuda. “Chris Sollars: Museum Residency.” SFMOMA Open Space, August 20, 2010.

   
arthurallan

How Things Work, Part 2 (cont)
by Aimee Le Duc
05.19.10 Art Practical


Brion Nuda Rosch and Chris Sollars. "Arthur Allan," 2009; collaborative project, Hallway Projects and 667Shotwell. Courtesy of Hallway Projects and 667Shotwell, San Francisco.

   
arthurallan

ri-FLEKT at WE Artspace
by Nastia Voynovskaya
The Daily Californian Oct 6, 2010


Chris Sollars new solo show at WE Artspace, titled “ri-FLEKT,” adventurously explores (and alters) the ways the small Oakland venue interacts with the surrounding urban landscape. The artist swapped the bus stop bench outside the venue with the couch that usually occupies the inside, augmenting each object to bring out the elements of each respective environment. A blanket with the portrait of Charlie, the WE Artspace dog, lays on the outdoor couch while Charlie herself can be found inside, a few feet away. Meanwhile, the bus stop bench occupies the bulk of the interior’s floor, a sheet of shiny plastic reflecting the walls while a recording of traffic sounds plays on a stack of speakers..


 
2009  
arthurallan

ARTHUR ALLAN
REVIEW by Zachary Royer Scholz
ISSUE 4: ART PRACTICAL


In light of cooperative creation’s many pitfalls, the success of “Arthur Allan,” is surprisingly refreshing. Developed collaboratively by Brion Nuda Rosch and Chris Sollars, the show not only combines their respective art practices and residential art spaces—Hallway Projects and 667 Shotwell—but also embraces the neighborhood and objects situated between their two homes.

   
hector

SFMOMA OPEN FUTURES VIDEO

Video Documentation by Hector Escarraman

http://vimeo.com/7271512

tableopen

SFMOMA OPEN FUTURES PHOTO Documentation

The room was full of controlled chaos and cacophony, with video projections on the walls by Chris Sollars, air raid sounds and live audio by sound artist Matt Volla and composer Luciano Chessa, dark and dramatic lighting, and a huge tapestry of the manifesto that originally covered the steer was eventually hung from the second story; afternoon.

 
tableopen

SFMOMA OPEN FUTURES tablehopper REVIEW

Oh. My. God. Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod. OH. MY. GOD. That's what kept racing through my mind as I watched a 650-pound spit-roasted steer get lifted out of a bicycle-powered trailer and unwrapped on an equally massive butcher-block table at the latest OPENrestaurant event this past Saturday October 17th.

The room was full of controlled chaos and cacophony, with video projections on the walls by Chris Sollars, air raid sounds and live audio by sound artist Matt Volla and composer Luciano Chessa, dark and dramatic lighting, and a huge tapestry of the manifesto that originally covered the steer was eventually hung from the second story; afternoon.

 
sollars1

N&P: Reason to Believe: Andrew Scott Monday, 03 August 2009

Kyle and I opted for the Center for the Arts and we were in luck because when we got there, Chris Sollars (middle), one of the artists in residency was there and invited us up for coffee and a tour of his studio.

The studio was incredible; a giant pillared squat-like ballroom with raw paint cracking walls, and windows spilling in natural light on Sollars' sparse, neatly-placed installations.

Positive Tax

667Shotwell in article
Making Space by Emily Warner

NYFA Current the magazine for artists

New York Foundation for the Arts: Redefining the narrow concept of suitable exhibition space, artist-run projects are booming right now, with work being shown in apartment halls and bathrooms, in buildings in transition, and in artists' studios across the country. Emily Warner reports on new projects in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, and speaks to the key players in these renegade initiatives.

   
sollars_flipflops

David Ireland Tribute Open Space SFMOMA Blog

Left: Chris Sollars, Untitled, 2009 Right: David Ireland, Broom Collection With Boom, 1978/88

I live within three blocks of David’s 500 Capp St. House, and have been making sculptures directly with ready-made-trash and debris I find on streets of our neighborhood. His home has a presence in our neighborhood which has influenced many of the artists’ projects that have happened at my home at 667Shotwell. David’s home sculptures carry the residue of history that came before. This sculpture was made on 20th St, just down the street from Capp St House. —Chris Sollars

   
arthurallan

Mumbai San Francisco
by Christian L. Frock
Unauthorized Anthology


A moving and beautifully directed documentary short that explores the emotions of San Francisco-based Indians living abroad in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November 2008. Directed by Chris Sollars, a project of 667 Shotwell Films, and produced by Amit Botadkar, Dushyant Agarwal, Poojan Shah.

   
 
2008
sollarslabat

SOLLARS. LABAT. INTERVIEW
SFMOMA Blog

On November 4, we’ll be screening two democracy-themed projects by Bay Area artists. Chris Sollars’ documentary C RED BLUE J explores the red state/blue state divide of 2004, as Chris juggles his beliefs with those of a sister working for the Bush administration, a born-again Christian father, and a lesbian mother. I Want You (Auditions) is Tony Labat’s new work, culled from footage of the original I WANT YOU performances. I asked them to interview each other for the blog & they typed their conversation together in real time in Tony’s studio Weds afternoon.

 
Positive Tax

With Politics in the Air,
a Freedom Free-for-All Comes to Town

Review by Holland Cotter
September 23, 2008 New York Times Vol. CLVIII Pages B1 & B6


Chris Sollars’s film “C Red Blue J” documents major changes in his family’s history as he moved back and forth between a “normal” suburban childhood and a fraught adulthood that finds him with a born-again Christian father, a right-wing sister and a mother who lives with a female lover. The film opens with Mr. Sollars in bed, as if he would rather sleep through the familial confusion that follows, which he sets against the background of the 2004 election campaign and the Iraq war. VIEW PDF

   
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Armory Show Explores 'Democracy in America' by Siddhartha Mitter
WNYC RADIO
September 24 2008
   
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SFMOMA BLOG: RED BLUE STUDY

A special election-week Collection Rotation by San Francisco-based artist & curator Chris Sollars, whose experimental documentary C RED BLUE J will be screening in the Wattis theater Nov 4. All works collection SFMOMA & listed in detail at the bottom of this post.

http://blog.sfmoma.org/2008/11/03/collection-rotation5/

   
Positive Tax

The Liminal Art Space
by Aimee Le Duc
SF Camerawork Spring/Summer 2008 Pgs 38-41


Chris Sollars, also a successful San Francisco artist,has been running an arts space in his home for over six years. 667 Shotwell serves as a home base for performance, documentation of projects, and conceptual work. This space is certainly an extension of Sollars' artistic practice, allowing him to work with and support other artists while further investigating his own work. VIEW PDF

  Harmanci, Reyhan; “Home is Where the Art Is: Underground art galleries serve a special niche”; SF Chronicle; Sept 4, 2008; Pg E1 & E6
  Martini, Tiffany; “High Five: Chris Sollars”; SF Examiner, Vol. CXLIII No 66; Aug 27, 2008; Pg 14
  Nataraj, Nirmala; “(EDIT) at Mainiac Gallery”; Artweek; Vol. 39, Issue 8; October 2008 Pgs 13-14 14 VIEW PDF
   
2007 Pugh, Dina; “The Innocent Gaze”; Jack Hanley Gallery; 2007
   
2006 Le Duc, Aimee; "Chris Sollars Accumulative Dissipation;" Southern Exposure; Vol1, No. 6; 2006; VIEW PDF
  Ysohinori, Niwa; “Chris Sollars Interview”; Tokyo-San Francisco Art Times, Vol. 1, No. 4; 2006 VIEW PDF
  “Kimono News”; Cinra Magazine, Vol. 11; Oct 20, 2006
  Lebuhn, Henrik; “Follow the Leader”; Links Log; Feburary 3 2006; VIEW PDF
  Moore, Kurt; “Malleable on Display at OSUM”; The Marion Star; Feb 4 2006 VIEW PDF
  Miller, James; “Art and Opera on Campus”; The Marion Star; Feb 3 2006
  Kroth, Maya; Talkin Trash”; SF Weekly; January 11-17 2006; `Vol. 24, No.50, Page 21 VIEW PDF
  Trippe, John; “Accumulative Dissipation”; Fecal Face; January 13 2006;
  Bamberger, Alan; “Accumulative Dissipation”; Art business; January 13 2006;
  Lebuhn, Henrik; “Trashbags irritating San Francisco”; Links Log; Feburary 3 2006; VIEW PDF
   
2005 Buckner, Clark; Critic’s Choice: “Cross Cuts” Southern Exposure; Bay Area Gaurdian; June 1 - 7 2005 `Vol. 39, No.35 Page VIEW PDF
  Orden, Abraham; “Aperto San Francisco”; Flash Art; July September 2005; Vol XXXVIII No.243; Pages 69-70
  Olson, Marisa "Video Personalities"; SOMA Magazine; February, 2005; Vol. 19 Issue 1; Page 86
   
2004  
Positive Tax

Multiplex
Review by Holland Cotter
February 20, 2004 New York Times Vol. CLIII Page
B32

At least one of these mini-theaters takes the form of an installation: Chris Sollars's video ''Bjorn Again'' -- in which the artist has inserted himself as Bjorn Borg's opponent and feminine alter ego in the final match of the 1980 United States Open -- plays on a television set in a simulated basement rec room, with a ready supply of beer and vintage Playboys at hand. VIEW PDF

  Gershman, Jacob; "Cultural Affairs Chief Defends City’s Support of Pornography Exhibition"; New York Sun ; Monday March 8, 2004, Front Page; Page 1 VIEW PDF
  Gershman, Jacob; "City is Funding Porn Display in DUMBO Show Ð Generous Support For Soft-Core Exhibit"; New York Sun ; Tuesday March 9, 2004, Front Page;VIEW PDF
  Holder Overnight: Montreal CJAD 800 AM w/ Peter Anthony Holder; June 11, 2004
  Magic 98.1 Atlanta: Afternoon Show w/ Benji June 9, 2004.  
  DeVaney, Scott "Globetrotting T-shirts"; The Wave Magazine; June 30 – July 13, 2004; Vol. 4 Issue 14; Page 8
  Marr, Madeline; “Putting it Together: with Cheryl Hartup, Associate Curator, Miami Art Museum”; Miami Herald; Style Section; Wednesday June 23, 2004 VIEW PDF
  Buesing, Nicole and Klaas, Heiko; "Before opening sells off... A gallery round course in New York - more police instead of art demanded"; Die Welt; Culture; Art Market; March 27, 2004
  Robinson, Walter; "Weekend Update"; Art Net; Magazine Reviews; March 17, 2004
  Andresen, Kristen ; "Medium Rare Rockport festival highlights Maine's emerging digital, Web and art scene "; Bangor Daily News; Arts & Leisure; Friday March 12, 2004
  Maine, Stephen; "Dateline Brooklyn"; Art Net; February 2004 VIEW PDF
  Westerbeke, Julia; "First Exit to Brooklyn"; Time Out New York; February 26 -March 4, 2004; Issue No. 439; Page 67 VIEW PDF
  ANONYMOUS; "Letter to the Editors"; Aristos; April 1, 2004 VIEW PDF
   
2003 Morse, Eric; "Mobile Phone"; Trampoline Magazine, Volume 1/Number 1; August 2003
  Rufus, Anneli; "City Focus San Francisco"; Art News Magazine; Volume 102/Number 6; June 2003, Page 66
  Beeler, Monique; "California Impressions: Early artists explore people, places close to home" Oakland Tribune; Arts & Leisure; Tuesday February 18, 2003
   
2002 Cotter, Holland; "Cinema ˆ la Warhol, With Cowboys, Stillness and Glamour"; New York Times ; Fine Arts & Leisure; Friday April 5, 2002, Vol. CL1 no.52079, Page B29 VIEW PDF
  Porter, William; "Endless Summer Love, Flower Power Tours Revisit Haight-Ashbury"; Denver Post; Travel; Sunday September 29, 2002, Page 1T, 4T, & 5T
  Woods, Micheal; "News: New York"; Contemporary Magazine; June- Aug 2002, Page 47-48
  Storts, Brian; "Words from 7 artists in San Francisco"; NY Arts Magazine; Vol.7 No.6 June 2002, Page 40-46
  Lewczuk, Margrit; "Naked @ 667Shotwell"; NY Arts Magazine; Vol.7 No.5 May 2002, Page 95 VIEW PDF
  Chen, Vivian; "Urban Evidence"; City on a Hill Press; UC Santa Cruz; Vol 36 Issue 23;April 18, 2002; Page 25 VIEW PDF
   
2001 Cook, David; Art Picks "We're Waiting" New Langton Arts; SF Weekly; September 19- 25 2001; `Vol. 20, No.35 VIEW PDF
   
2000 Helfand, Glen; Critic's Choice: art "Closed Circuit" New Langton Arts; Bay Area Gaurdian; Feb. 23-29 Vol. 34, No.21
  Westbrook, Lindsey; Over There: visual arts "Closed Circuit" New Langton Arts; East Bay Express; March 3, 2000 Vol. 22, No.21 VIEW PDF
  Allen, Gwen; "Closed Circuit Essay" New Langton Arts; Feb 2000 VIEW PDF
   
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