Biography
Born
1959 New York, NY
Education
1978-1982 BA, Long Island University, Brookville, NY
1982-1985 Art Students League of New York, New York, NY
1985-1986 National Academy School of Fine Arts, New York, NY
Solo Exhibitions
2008 Seraphin Gallery, Philadelphia PA (click here to view)
2005 Seraphin Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2002 New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT
1998 Marymount Manhattan College Gallery, New York, NY
1996 United Nations, New York, NY
1993 AVA, Chattanooga, TN
Selected Group Exhibitions
2008 Naples Museum of Art, Contemporary Drawings from the Dyke Collection, Naples FL
2007 Seraphin Gallery, Small Works, Philadelphia PA
Woodstock School of Art, Faculty Exhibition, Woodstock, NY
2006 Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, The Painted Interior
Hirschl and Adler, Summer Selections, New York, NY
Masterworks from the New Britain Collection:
Fort Wayne Museum of Art
Santa Fe Art Museum of Fine Arts
Knoxville Museum of Art
Cincinnati Art Museum
Telfair Museum of Art
Georgia Museum of Art
2005 Seraphin Gallery, Out of Line
2004 Hirschl and Adler, Highlights from the Collection
Hirschl and Adler, Summer Group Exhibition
Seraphin Gallery, Masters and Mavericks
Seraphin Gallery, Masters and Mavericks: The Nude
2003 Hirschl and Adler, Observation-Creation, 200 Years of Still-Life
Arkansas Arts Center, Collector’s Show
Hirschl and Adler, The Eloquent Line
Arkansas Arts Center , Magic Vision
2001 Arkansas Arts Center, Eighth National Drawing Invitational
Galerie Albert Benamou, New York Realists Now, Paris, FR
Arnot Art Museum , Re-Presenting Representation V
2000 Hirschl and Adler, New York-Classicism Now
Arkansas Arts Center , Collector's Show
1999 Federal Reserve Bank Gallery, National Prize Show
John Pence Gallery, Drawings
Butler Institute of American Art, 65th Midyear
1996 Arkansas Arts Center, Collector's Show
Tasticheff and Co., Group Exhibition, New York, NY
Hunter Museum of Art, Spectrum '95, Chattanooga, TN
Awards
2008 Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation
2005 Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant
2005 New Jersey State Council on the Arts - Painting Fellowship
1999 Cambridge Art Association – Best in Show, Rathbone Family Prize
1993 Savannah National – Award for Painting, 2ndPrize
1991 Allied Artists of America - Art Students League of NY Prize
Selected Bibliography
Philadelphia Inquirer, December 24, 2006
New York Times, March 3, 2006
Art in America, June/July 2005, p. 190
Citybeat, June 21, 2005
Philadelphia Inquirer, January 28, 2005
Philadelphia Weekly Online, February 9-15, 2005
American Arts Quarterly, spring, 2002, pp. 46-48
American Artist, June, 2002
New York Times, September 8, 2000
New Yorker, August 14, 2000
Art New England, August/September, 1999
AVA Newsmagazine, Autumn 1993
Recent Press
Art in American Review
Christopher Gallego transforms banal subjects such as rubber gloves, potatoes, and careworn interiors into timeless forms suffused with light…Gallego’s backgrounds are often the plain interior of his studio. Except for an early figure study in pencil on paper (1998), no human being intrudes, yet each work radiates human presence. We experience it in the paint-smeared Drop Cloth (2004-04)…the texture of the cloth against the painted-wood furniture plays white against white, rough against smooth, warm against cool – a visual compendium of light created by color…In the manner of Giorgio Morandi, Gallego paints objects that become portraits of a time and place defying categorization.
Anne Fabbri
Christopher Gallego - Catalogue Essay
My first taste of Chris Gallego's work - 1996 at this New Jersey studio. My repsonse absolute wonderment. I included his work in a collector's exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center. The AAC then acquired Study for Studio Chair (1998) and eight of his drawings appeared in my Eighth National Drawing Invitational. In that catalogue I wrote, some images are like portraits of old friends...his work reflects a master draughtsman who brings life and substance to paper regardless of the subject.
Now as then, Gallego transforms the ordinary into the ethereal and mysterious. His work is a statement about what is before us and yet unseen. He depicts objects that, at first glance, seem mundane, left behind, even forgotten. So why do I feel palpable wonderment? I don't know; maybe it's because his obsessive observation brings to the surface the beauty of the ordinary; perhaps he's consumed with perceiving and revealing all the nuances to be discovered in inanimate objects. Because of these beautiful obsessions, he is able to extract from life a beauty and soul where we once saw none. Yes, I think the inner being of character is made clear through his gentle and sure eye, touch and placement.
Many times, his paintings and drawings create an almost enchanting atmosphere by which we are pulled into their world. As we meditate upon his colors, tones and surfaces, this world of the ordinary, mundane and forgotten becomes palpable. That's why Gallego has the power to make us see many things for the first time.
In Egg (2004), we are mesmerized by the simmering reflective hues in their curving, graceful and never ending orbit. Gallego's pencil on paper captures the poetry as well as the starkness of the geometrical space in Studio Windows (1998-2002). Our eye and mind dance as we explore every texture, shape, and tone. In the painting Windows (2002), mysterious visions are suggested as the stacked, geometric glass transmits various rays of light. Human character and life that once was is apparent in what remains in Medicine Chest, Drop Cloth, Shirt, Bag of Plaster and Studio Chair. Each has its own personality and feelings which will not be forgotten.
This exhibition of painting and drawings is major in both execution and substance. He offers us what is here and now as well as what was without sentiment. His work is a journey in seeing.
Townsend Wolfe
Former Director and Chief Curator of the Arkansas Art Center