chris natrop -artist-

"I'm trying to find presence in mounting absence.

I have always been compelled to lay bare the subliminal side of perception. Although such a task may be unobtainable, its undertaking will nonetheless leave behind a particular residue that I define as my art.

Having moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco just over a year ago, I found L.A. to be a surprisingly unsettled. But after months of readjustment, living at the northern-eastern fringe of the city, a sense of place did begin to settle in. I started to read the city as a network of sectors interconnected through its highways. The whole of which couldn't be absorbed in the same way as other cities. For me, Los Angeles stands as a frenetic and disjointed place. Without an obvious city-center, I found its true heart to be its free-ranging network of arteries, its highways and thoroughfares, to be at its core. Its circulatory system is an entity onto itself. This system has its own culture as it is a city defined through its driving." Chris Natrop.

He is exhibiting at the Sonoma County Museum July 22- Sept. 3. If you live relatively near I would jump at the chance to catch this wonderful artist on the rise. He has exhibited in New York, L.A., and Chicago so catching him will not be as easy as we could all hope. His work is made from hand cut paper, colored ink, watercolor, iridescence medium, thread, push pins, and cast shadows- to name a few.

Here is what guest curator Gay Dawson wrote of Natrop's work at the Sonoma County Museum: "...Natrop an artist based in Los Angeles, works primarily in paper which he arduously slices freehand with a mat knife into free-flowing works which he suspends from an architectural surfaces such as walls and ceiling. The resulting installations have a surprisingly sculptural presence and feel both intimate and monumental at once."