CHRIS WILDER   

(Hey) Over under sideways down,
(Hey) Backwards forwards square and round.
(Hey) Over under sideways down,
(Hey) Backwards forwards square and round.
When will it end, when will it end,
When will it end, when will it end?

Twisted sexuality couched in the language of the California Dream takes another form in the seemingly innocent stickers of fruits, vegetables, flowers and anatomical drawings, which are languidly punctuated
with vintage erotica.
Wilder’s sculptural installation makes the duality portrayed in the book – and in life itself – physical, raising the stakes with references to death and immortality, in a piece titled “over, under, sideways, down
(holy smoke),” a variation on the original sculptural installation (Kapinos Galerie, Berlin 2006), which featured full-sized palm trees sprouting through a false floor. Unlike the Palms, Cypress trees are tolerant
of harsh conditions and are a tree of mixed messages. In Antiquity the Cypress was a symbol of either death or immortality in various civilizations. Aside from this contradiction, the Cypress was also considered a tree of magical powers and represented a central feature of the centres of learning which were vital in the development of mathematics, geometry, philosophy and democracy, as well as cosmology and religious awareness.
They were, in fact, the seedlings of all that make our present civilization what it is.
In a way that’s typical of Wilder’s work, he seamlessly overlays one story with another. Phillip Dick’s socially awkward but sympathetic amateur scientist Isidore becomes an idiotic, overconfident teenage cosmologist in a Yardbird’s song.

Confessions of a Crap Artist Part 2. (Holy Smoke )

May - June 2007

Chris Wilder once again mines the rich vein of absurdities undercutting that preposterous Sodom known as
Southern California through the lens of it most conspicuous citizen “the crap artist”.
The exhibition titled Confessions of A Crap Artist, borrows its name from a Phillip K. Dick’s novel.
Dick’s book focuses on a character named Jack Isidore who like Wilder himself is obsessed with amateur
and ill-fated branches of scientific inquiry. Also like the artist, Isidore collects old scientific books and magazines, countless worthless specimens, and is enthralled with disproved theories
Wilder’s clear identification with Isidore as meticulous observer of all that is unworthy of notice, is present
everywhere in the work. The collage paintings seem like bright aquariums where weird unnameable
ocean life, 17th century etchings, and the lurid bits of ordinary pornography float past each other without
any particular destination or regard for our presence.

In Wilder’s view the answer is never. With Wilder’s inversion of these trees, they refuse their roles as magic
wands healing the grieving; and rather than become antennae to the stellar gods, they are aiming for Hades, god
of the Underworld and of Earthly Riches, in order to reflect the tragic state of war, genocide, torture, greed
and corruption which seems to keep spinning and repeating, backwards and forwards, no matter how many lessons
our “civilization” claims to have learned.