Chris Larson: Failure

Chris Larson's art examines the relationships between humans and machines, exploring these ideas in sculpture, photography, drawing, and film. is sculptures are large wooden constructions that "operate" in an ambiguous realm between heroic purpose and absurd repetition. They play the dignity of human work and invention against the futility of toil and mechanization. Some sculptures speak of irrational collisions, like that of a spaceship crashing into a barn; other sculptures are "machines" to which Larson returns in his films, documenting enigmatic collaborations among people who labor together toward an unknown purpose. In one film, Larson confronts tropes of good and evil, yet confounds us with the strange, primal results of the encounter. Richly metaphoric, Larson's work dissolves clear boundaries between human and machine, purpose and absurdity, and the possibility of spiritual transcendence versus mechanistic determinism. 

With texts by Kris Douglas,, Wayne L. Roosa, Marc Glode, and Tamatha Sopinski Perlman, as well as an interview with the artist by Sonke Magnus Muller, this monograph documents a new film and features several sculptures shown for the first time, as well as early three dimensional works that illuminate Larson's later films and sculptural installations.