Unhome

March 14 – April 28nd, 2025

Opening Reception: March 14, 6 to 8p.

American Art Catalogues presents Unhome, an exhibition of new works by Christopher Culver to coincide with the release of the artist’s first monograph.

Christopher Culver’s first monograph, Unhome, includes drawings from 2020 to 2024 that depict waning environments. The works index a specific historical moment, chronicling American life amidst the aftershocks of deindustrialization. As we traverse empty movie theaters and abandoned cityscapes, we encounter animals, angels, and apparitions. These figures sometimes play a role akin to that of Virgil in Dante’s Divine Comedy and guide us through the interregnum. Other times, they stand as solemn totems of stagnation. This rusted world, however, is not irreparably fallen. Tenderness filters through the debris. The artist’s presentation of drawings at American Art Catalogues foregrounds this quiet vitality.

Titled Turtles in the Pond, this new body of work focuses on one of the creatures that has previously only appeared on the margins of Culver’s spectral ecosystem. Through mundane scenes of turtle life, we are reminded that these animals are resilient. That’s a good thing, because they are often dumped down storm drains and abandoned in city parks. We don’t know how the turtles in Culver’s drawings ended up in the pond. Whatever the case, they thrive in its strange waters. The silty green expanse has no boundaries. It is a vacuum, tethered to the world by a drainage pipe. Other traces of the surrounding environment are visible in the shadowy reflections that the turtles puncture as they swim around and break the stillness.

Save for a lone butterfly and some reeds, the turtles are on their own, undisturbed by other life forms. Their tranquil existence has eerie undertones. In dystopian film and literature, the earth is often depicted in two ways: either as an arid wasteland or as a flooded ruin. The pond evokes this latter possibility, and yet the turtles assuage the dread of our uncertain future. They bob around the placeless pool and reach some sort of balance. Their life is muted but continues.

Christopher Culver (b. 1985, Miami, FL) lives and works in New York. Culver received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008, and his MFA from the University of Texas at Austin in 2013. Selected solo exhibitions include Modern Art, London (forthcoming, 2025), Unhome, American Art Catalogues, (New York, NY, 2025) Tough Joy, Michael Benevento (Los Angeles, CA 2024), Manhattan, Chapter NY (New York, NY, 2023), Chapter NY (New York, NY, 2021), Interior, The Meeting (New York, NY, 2021), The Problem with Worlds (A.D., New York, NY, 2021), Goodbye Houses, Redling Fine Art (Los Angeles, CA, 2017). Selected group exhibitions include: Greene Naftali, New York, NY (forthcoming, 2025) A Vanished Wholeness, Modern Art (Paris,FRA, 2025), Christopher Culver and Jimmy Wright, DIANA Gallery (New York, NY, 2024), Pendulum, Winter Street Gallery (Edgartown, MA, 2023), The Prey and the Shadow, Crèvecoeur (Paris, 2022), Off-Kilter, Michael Benevento (Los Angeles, CA, 2022), About Tegne, Collaborations (Copenhagen, DNK, 2022), New memories, ECHO (Cologne, DEU, 2022), Some Say the Soul is Made of Wind, Downs & Ross, (New York, NY, 2021), Who’s Afraid of the Great Indoors, Redling Fine Art (Los Angeles, CA, 2021).

For all inquiries, please contact info@americanartcatalogues.com