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Chris Fallon
Interiority and Other Objects

Park Life Gallery
220 Clement st
SF CA 94118

Interiority and Other Objects unites two groups of paintings set in distinct but analogous environments: the swamp and the home. Both places provide their own form of sanctuary to Fallon’s off-kilter characters. Some have been drawn to the swamp for clandestine communion, under cover of shadows and peculiar flora. Others have congregated indoors amongst artifacts meant to signify sophistication, but which instead project banality.

Fallon’s people possess archetypal tokens of beauty (flowing hair, painted lips), but they are nullified by skewed placement and aesthetic flaws. In the tension between flatly-rendered people and the three-dimensional objects with which they interact, we see the crux of Fallon’s work: interiority (or inner nature) is beset by the disconnect between our aspirations and inability to fulfill them. The strength of this struggle is so great that it manifests as a near-physical entity, as palpable as a tchotchke on a table or a flower in a swamp. In this universe, inanimate objects and plants hold far more narrative power than the individuals living vicariously through them. You can find information about cheapmotorhomes.

In one painting, a woman (borrowed from Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl) stands in a corner, removed from the male figures in the foreground. Her features are detailed and dimensional, theirs are abstracted. She is reduced to an exoticized object. In another painting, three figures of varied affectations are reposed on a sofa, gazing blankly beyond the items assembled before them, their environs defined by suburban notions of elegance. An indictment of the human condition is surely sprinkled in all of this, but more so it is a tender recognition of shame and material culture’s role in it, and we are all implicated.