Chris Larson, Still image from the film, Crush Collision, 2006Friday, November 17, 2006—Sunday, January 7, 2007
Minnesota Artists Gallery
Free Exhibition
Chris Larson gains inspiration for his installation from the planned collision of two 32-ton locomotives in the town of Crush, Texas on September 15, 1896. The crash represented the clash of two cultures—the North and the South, and thrilled spectators as they watched the latest technology and economic powers explode in a ball of flame and twisted metal.
Larson grew up in rural Minnesota and was influenced by storytelling, county fairs, television, and fort-building. He combines these influences in his wooden structures as he explores the dualities of life—love and hate, good and evil, life and death, sin and redemption—inherent in all humans. “My work,” said Larson, “has its foundation in rural myths originating in America’s heartland that situate the fantastical in the midst of the seemingly commonplace.”
Larson’s “collision” of objects for "Crush Collision" from America's past, present, and future cultures, presents a conversation among different and similar worlds. In a world where people, ideals, thoughts, race, beliefs, art, religion, and politics are constantly colliding, Larson literally smashes them together to see what unfolds.
The Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP) is supported by the Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial and in recognition of the valuable cultural contributions of artists to society.
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