Interviews
CHRISTOPHER REIGER: 13 Questions
I met with Christopher to discuss his work at our office in January of 2009. What follows is a fascinating discussion on the narrative nature of his work as well as what it means to make it.
AWD: How do you relate your blogging with your two-dimensional work? Do you get similar satisfaction out of both?
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
There are obvious differences between the different mediums and the thinking process is necessarily different, too, but in terms of the emotional satisfaction I feel when I'm writing or painting, it is pretty much the same. Also, as I developed the blog and writing became more natural, it became more like painting. When I have the skeleton down and I'm fleshing out ideas and playing with words - I'm in a similar state when I'm working with the painting, especially with the studies or when I'm drawing. In both modes, I'm trying to put symbols and ideas together to create a concrete piece. In fact, I think my artwork is very much like a sentence. When I was in grad school somebody said to me that I was too literal an artist. What they meant was the word, the implied text, was more powerful than the image in my drawings. And I think that is fundamentally true,,,the drawings are sort of like constructed sentences. You could almost diagram one of the drawings the same way you could diagram a sentence, so I think that there is a lot of give and take between those two worlds.
AWD: It does seem that your drawing is quite narrative. I don't necessary feel that way about your painting. Largely because it seems more all encompassing. You are drawn into the experience of the work and the story seems less important.
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
I think the paintings over the last two to three years have become much more fully realized environments. They are also more hallucinatory. There is a relationship here too - with the risk of sounding too "New Age," although I do take it seriously - with the mystical experience, where the mind is completely opened to perception. With the paintings, there is no real narrative structure because it just what's there - although they are very fractured. They break down into these broad abstract lines and these flat planes, which we don't perceive or see when we look at the natural world. In some ways the drawings are as important to me. I do like the paintings because what they show is important. But I think I'm just a very narrative person. With the paintings the initial inspiration is very satisfying, but the drawings allow me to enter immediately into this nice created sentence which serves as a spark. So I put a lot of these little sentences together. In the studio I've been hanging them salon style or staggered, much as a mathematician will write down formulas on a chalk board. I feel there is this poetic, arbitrary, yet very satisfying dialogue between them. Sort of the same way Dada poets like Andre Breton scattered words into the air to form poems. That is a nice way to construct meaning out of individual sparks.
AWD: So in your drawings you are creating meaning and in your paintings you are creating a vision?
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
Yes, I think that is an interesting distinction.
AWD: Is the vision something you see before or does it evolve as you are creating it?
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
A little bit of both. I think it is there principally before the task of getting it down on paper. But there are changes. I always do studies for the paintings. That isn't so for the drawings. I'll do quick sketches on Post-its for the drawings and the paintings, but there is an intermediate stage before the paintings - marker studies, where I get a sense of the color. They are much bigger - usually at least 15 x 15'' so I can get an idea of what the painting will look like. When I'm working on the paintings things will surprise me, but essentially the general structure is there when the study is finished.
AWD: What is the biggest thing you get out of making your work?
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
That's a big question. I feel it is about an ongoing conversation with the artwork and everything around me, including the people and the world. When I say it's a big question, I mean art is just what I do. So it's really just me being me.
AWD: So you don't see what you do as a choice?
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
Right, obviously if there were a terrible accident or some major geopolitical event that would restrict me from making art, I wouldn't. But given the means, I will still find a way to make it because it is very important for me to do so. I think that is why the drawings are in some ways the most important component to me because it is the most immediate way to communicate, even if I am just communicating abstract ideas.
AWD: Do you remember a time when you weren't creating art?
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
No, not with regard to the drawing - but the writing, yes. I began starting to work at writing in my late teens.
AWD:So, in a way you have no idea of what would happen if you stopped.
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
There have been periods of months that, for whatever reason, I stopped, although I would still carry journals and produce sketches. So, I don't know what would happen if I fully stopped drawing. But I do know what it's like to become distanced from drawing...and that isn't very comfortable.
AWD: In creating a new narrative or reality do you question it or is it just good enough to create it?
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
In many ways I feel like these narratives or sentences are questions I am posing to myself as well as to the viewer and I think that the other drawings in the series are half answers to those...because there has never really been a full answer. A lot of the questions are open-ended, almost like the idea of the koan - the question you can never answer, like the sound of one hand clapping. A rationalist can provide an answer, but if you open yourself to the mystery that resides in the question I think they can become quite valuable. So, in that sense, these little sentences are also questioning their own meaning. I suppose there is an element of absurdism in that as well.
AWD: It sounds like the meaning of your work takes a life of it's own. Like it is a conversation gone wild.
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
Yes, I think that the writing answers some of the same questions I pose in the process of doing the drawings. So, I think there is a give and take from drawing to drawing and drawing to painting, but also from the two-dimensional work to the writing. It's an ongoing conversation or meditation.
AWD: Is there a sociopolitical element to what you do?
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
I think that has been a question over the past few years that has become more acute. In the past I've assumed that because art is simply something that I do, it must have a sociopolitical role because as human individuals we all contribute. But I came to realize that the ''art world'' as we think of it is really just the art market. And the art market is very disconnected from sociopolitical activism; as a general rule, it isn't trying to impact positively on the world around us. So that has become a question I'm struggling with now. It is hard to take a painting or a drawing, artworks that in our contemporary world are considered luxury items, even if the dialogue about the work by other artists and writers is sociopolitical in nature- even if the work has a very precise political meaning, and my work doesn't. But even if it does, it is still locked in this luxury market. So, how do you get around that? I think there is a way. It's a combination of what you do with the work and what the work is about. For now, I use art sales to contribute to causes that I feel have great sociopolitical importance.
AWD: Do you go through periods of time when you feel like your work has arrived at what is trying to say?
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
If I ever arrive at a point where I feel the work doesn't need to evolve any more that will be deeply problematic. But I feel comfortable now letting the work take me where it wants to take me. I feel that progress often comes in baby steps. The basic questions that my work asks have stayed the same. However, in grad school my work changed drastically with respect to subject matter and medium. I feel that now there is no need to force these arbitrary changes on the work, I can let it guide me.
AWD: Do you see your work as a continuation of what is happening in the art world?
CHRISTOPHER REIGER:
The conceptual aspects of my work, an exploration of natural history with a healthy portion of the metaphysical or mystical, doesn't feel connected to general trends in the contemporary art world. But in terms of what my work looks like, there are precedents. A lot of the sources I draw from are not in the art world. They are anonymous scientific, biological, botanical illustrators from the 17th and 18th century or pseudoscientific alchemical drawings from even earlier. I'm actually happy that the concepts are distanced from what is generally going on now. That said, there are a lot of contemporary artists making work that I am very drawn to.
