CHRIS SOLLARS BIO

   
BIO | PRESS | CV
 

San Francisco based artist Chris Sollars work revolves around the reclamation and subversion of public space through urban interventions, the results of which are integrated into mixed media video installations. Sollars holds a BFA in Sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design and a MFA from Bard College.  He is also director and curator of 667Shotwell a space in his home for artists to do experimental work, started in 2001 during the wake of disappearing San Francisco art-spaces. Sollars’ work is in the collections of the Berkeley Art Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Mills College Art Museum, and Miami Art Museum. Awards include 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2013 San Francisco Arts Commission: Individual Artist Commission Grant, 2012 Center for Cultural Innovation Investing in Artists Grant, 2007 Eureka Fellowship Award, 2007 San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Grant, & 2009 Headlands Center for the Arts residency.

Sollars has exhibited and performed solo and collaborative works in venues nationally and internationally, including SFMOMA, Southern Exposure, and Steven Wolf Fine Arts, all in San Francisco; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; The New Children's Museum, San Diego; Berkeley Art Museum; Soap Factory, Minnesota; Franklin Street Works, Connecticut; Kroswork, Oakland; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn; Southern Machine Exposure Project; Tokyo; and the Aurlander International Airport, Stockholm, Sweden. His work has been featured in articles and reviews in the New York Times, BOOOOOOOM, Huffington Post, Juxtapoz, Contemporary Magazine, Daily Serving, CameraWork, Art Net, Flash Art, and San Francisco Arts Quarterly. A catalog of his Left Behind 2009–2012 photo series of public sculptures by Publication Studio, including an interview by art historian Jennifer Gonzalez, will be released in 2013.

Sollars in 2008 completed C RED BLUE J, an experimental documentary feature that uses his family, including his sister who works for the Bush Administration, his Born Again father, and his Lesbian mother to illustrate the complications of division during the 2004 Presidential election. C RED BLUE J screened at SFMOMA on Election Day and Dec 2 and in Creative Time’s Democracy in America show that took place at the Park Armory September 21 - 27. C RED BLUE J was written about in the

NY TIMES: With Politics in the Air, a Freedom Free-for-All Comes to Town  By Holland Cotter:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/arts/design/23demo.html?ref=design
and on
WNYC RADIO: Armory Show Explores 'Democracy in America' by Siddhartha Mitter:
http://www.wnyc.org/news/articles/110199

The C RED BLUE J 79 minutes in length is available for viewing here:
http://www.vimeo.com/1909936
DVD’s available upon request.