Chris Corales creates collages that incorporate vintage found material such as cardboard, old book-binding cloth, and the like. He perceives these works as manufactured containers that become silent collaborators in his exploration of color and form. Through a process that excludes textual elements, he creates delicate abstractions that have the quality of meditations on time and space. In his new body of work, Permanent Vacation, the artist focuses on textured minimalistic compositions imbued with evocative qualities. In these pieces, the materials become signifiers of movement and transformation, referencing natural landscapes, architecture, and the spaces of the mind. Transmigration and adaptation to new surroundings are consistent themes throughout these works, which reflect on the challenges that accompany a change of environment, as well as the luxury of solitude.

The Dune Kiosk series explores open and contained spaces as literal and imaginary landscapes. The endless quality of the dune can be as much a source of freedom as one of apprehension. Corales visualizes the dune as a kiosk that offers compartmentalization and familiarity, while reminding us that the concept of wilderness as external is merely a metaphor for our own interior dialogue.The Winter Light series consists of collages offering a visual record of the adjustment to long winter months. From the sparse monochromatic backdrops, colors peak briefly and intertwine momentarily like shapes glimpsed in passing. The series tacitly conveys our experiences in periods of seasonal change—both within ourselves and in the phenomenal world.

Corales' new body of work evokes the liminal spaces in which time touches and changes us, without allowing anything or anybody to remain unmarked. Elements of the collages reveal signs of their own temporality—and in turn, they become markers of Corales' artistic practice over time.

Chris Corales has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in San Francisco at Gregory Lind Gallery, Luggage Store Gallery, Adobe Books, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, and New Langton Arts. He has shown nationally with Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR; Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia; Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York; Samson Projects, Boston; and The International Center for Collage, PA. His work has been included in international exhibitions at Pierogi Gallery, Leipzig, Germany; and Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon, Portugal. Corales has been featured in Artforum, San Francisco Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Sun, and NY Arts Magazine. Originally from the Bay Area, he currently lives in Philadelphia, PA. This is the artist’s second solo show with the gallery.

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