“When I need solitude, I envision myself in a purple forest that is filled with fairies and monsters, this is a small chapter from a bigger world within me.”

The world of Claire Christerson is infinite, deeply spiritual, and filled with double meaning. An intense sketcher and writer, Christerson explains, “I am interested in the personal saga, the myth, creating a story without words, letting my drawings and sculptures fill in the verbal gaps...” Personal experiences manifest themselves into motifs, characters, and colors that repeat throughout her practice, from film and sculpture to painting and watercolor. Alive, these motifs develop their own iconography through repetition. Ultimately, Christerson creates a universe that is unique, with its own language, images, and symbols.

Daisy Chains Heart Ecology’s narrative contains close to a decade of this practice in action. The exhibition focuses on a single character’s saga, Grizelda, as she enters an alternate universe filled with creatures and monsters found in Christerson’s previous work. The work tactfully announces that everything visceral is in the end temporary; Christerson’s precise use of color and the punctuation of her symmetry fills this idea of transmutation with meaning and life. “I wanted to create large-scale watercolors that I approached like ‘heart maps’; once these maps were done, I rendered specific imagery through sculpture, and wanted this world to exist in different formats.” Processing feeling through her “heart maps,” which Christerson defines as a personal blueprint to one’s emotions, invites viewers to do the same for themselves. The exhibition consists of watercolor, sculpture and a soundscape created by frequent collaborator Kinlaw. Daisy Chains Heart Ecology is Christerson’s most comprehensive and personal exhibition to date.

Claire Christerson lives and works in New York City. She received a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in 2015. Her work has been shown internationally since 2012.

Exhibition Press

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