Installation Views from Candidates and Citizens
Installation Details from Candidates and Citizens
Candidates and Citizens
Chris Cran | Cheers! (Candidate #2) | Oil and acrylic on canvas | 243.8 x 121.9 cm | 2013
TrepanierBaer Presents New Work By Chris Cran: Candidates and Citizens
April 18 - May 18, 2013
Loved by Millions
John Will: Loved by Millions
April 6 – June 2, 2013
The video production of Loved by Millions coincided with the development of Chris Cran's exhibition of the same name at the AGW in 1989. Created by the artist's long-time friend and colleague, painter John Will of Calgary, the video production playfully responds to the documentary tradition, featuring artist-subject, Chris Cran. John Will is a prominent artist known best for his works in painting, his critiques of popular culture, his humorous and ironic means of visual resolution. Will's Loved by Millions traces the journey of Cran by air from his home city of Calgary to Detroit, and then by limousine to Windsor, to attend the opening of his 1989 solo show with his broker-agent and chic.Read More
Chris Cran | Just Two Maos Down From Some Guy With A Goddamned Tea Cosy On His Head | Oil on canvas | 5' 6" x 9' | 1985
MOCA Warhol Exhibit
Via Museum of Contemporary Art Calgary:
Calgary prepares to play host to Andy Warhol, icon of Pop art for an exclusive, limited engagement. Legendary Athletes are paired with a legendary artist at the Museum of Contemporary Art Calgary (MOCA) as MOCA Calgary presents the full suite of 10 Warhol paintings in his Athlete series supplemented by related works from Alberta collections. Organized by MOCA, Calgary is the sole Canadian venue.
The Warhol series features paintings of sports stars: Muhammed Ali, O.J. Simpson, Pele, Jack Nicklaus, Dorothy Hamill, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Chris Evert, Tom Seaver, Willie Shoemaker, and Rod Gilbert.
The series was commissioned in 1977 by Richard Weisman, a New York investment banker who befriended Warhol in the 1970s; it fashions a snapshot of some of the dominant sports figures of the decade. Weisman who combines a passion for both art and sport wanted to do something to bring together these two often disparate worlds. Weisman took on the role of selecting the athletes and bringing them together with the artist. Warhol and Weisman travelled together all across the USA to meet and create the athlete portraits. More than simply the financial ‘producer’ Weisman acted as liaison smoothing relations between the artist and his subjects.
As complement to the Warhol works on view from Mr. Weisman’s collection, we present: Great Moments in Pop: featuring works by Warhol from Alberta collections.
Further, this adjunct exhibition presents the work of respected Calgary artists that reflect upon the multiple themes of sport and art as well as homages, riffs and variations upon signature Warhol themes and styles (including Shelley Ouellet, Chris Cran, John Will and Billy McCarroll).
Also see Kyle Shewfelt's post on the exhibit here.
"Builders: Canadian Biennial 2012"
Guest Host | Ink, acrylic and cloth on foamcore | 14” x 12” | 2011
Chris Cran is included in BUILDERS: CANADIAN BIENNIAL 2012 @ National Gallery of Canada
2 November 2012 – 20 January 2013
Builders presents more than 100 recent and significant acquisitions by emerging and established artists instrumental in shaping perspectives in Canadian art today. The exhibition reflects the work of the Gallery’s curators in building the collection through an informed understanding of contemporary Canadian art across diverse media, environments and generations. Organized by the National Gallery of Canada.
"If Something Appears To Be Photographic It Is"
Chris Cran | Untitled (Photo Series) | Ink on paper | 25.4 x 15.2 cm | 2009
Cran's new works will appear in a solo exhibition 'If Something Appears to Be Photographic It Is' at the Trepanier Baer gallery in Calgary, Alberta. March 25th - May 1, 2010.
"The Return of the Beautiful Hayseed"
Clint Roenisch Gallery presents 'The Return of the Beautiful Hayseed', a small survey of Chris Cran's work from 1980 - 2006.
Clint Roenisch is pleased to present a small survey of work made between 1980 and 2006 by Chris Cran, considered one of Canada’s most important and visually inquisitive painters. Cran has emphasized the process of perception, optical phenomena, image coherence and the role of the photographic as key components to his work. This practice, which has roamed across the spectrum from figuration to abstraction, often melding disparate techniques into the same painting, has also usually included an overt sense of humour and visual wit.Read More
"The McIntyre Ranch Project"
Cran's work appears in 'The McIntyre Ranch Project 'at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge, Alberta.
THE MCINTYRE RANCH PROJECT
Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge
Until September 11, 2005
By Douglas MacLean
As Chris Cran lets us know in his large painting featuring an anonymous talking head, McIntyre Ranch is... king big! Who better to tell the story in two words than Alberta’s master of wit and art.Read More
Inherent Vice | Exhibition View
"Inherent Vice"
Inherent Vice is a solo show by Chris Cran at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (SAAG) in Lethbridge, Alberta, December 5, 1987 - January 24, 1988.
Inherent Vice
December 5, 1987 - January 24, 1988
Curator: Joan Stebbins
Organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery with funding assistance from The Canada Council and the Alberta Art Foundation .
The inclusion of Chris Cran in open-ended narrative scenes, with elements and props drawn from popular culture, is reminiscent of boys’ adventure stories from the forties. Cran, as a sort of comic-book everyman, becomes the vehicle through which we confront ambiguous, anecdotal events. We become, in fact, voyeurs of his voyeurism. In this incarnation, as a puckish trickster, Cran plays upon western culture’s need for entertainment, titillation and suspense.
The Western intellect is trained to search for the why in any implied narrative. Denied the answer to these questions by the moral ambiguity and open-endedness of Cran’s scenarios, one must still confront the reality and unquestionable authority of the painting as paint. Where the real and the unreal, the expected and the unexpected co-exist, an alternation of attitude is initiated that pivots on looking. Aware of the desire that is stirred by images, Cran abandons us in confrontation with enigmatic fantasies. In his own words, “the art context is broken down as the viewer participates in filling the gap between ludicrous proposition and apparent fact.”