Chris Woods is an all-Canadian artist who takes on mall culture as easily as the Stations of the Cross. The contradictions in his subject matter lampoon modern consumer life. Simultaneously his images have a kind of rhapsodic mysticism. This has lent itself well to earlier pieces that integrated pop culture and liturgical high art.
Woods has been described as "a postmodernist Norman Rockwell". Whether parodying Coca Cola, the Gap, Burger King, Calvin Klein or Dairy Queen, Woods — a self-taught painter from Chilliwack, BC — paints himself, his wife and friends into his visual narratives using a high-realist photographic style. His images have a comfortable neighbourly feeling, yet clearly are filled with uncertainty, incommunicability and anarchy.
Woods has shown at Diane Farris since 1991. His eagerly-awaited new body of
work, The Magic Hour, Part One, accesses the visual
language of car advertising. The series originated during
Woods' mixed media project Billboard, in which he considered
the gulf between what car advertisers promise and what cars
actually deliver.
The title, Magic Hour, is derived from a photographer's
term describing the blissful quality of ambient light immediately
following sunset. The lighting is popular with car advertisers
for the way it conjures complimentary touches of glory and
wistfulness. Unfortunately, utopic visions of car ownership
more frequently are belied by real-life actualities of road
rage, construction zones and traffic jams. Woods' narratives,
although set in warm and glowing light, therefore contain
symbols of war and conflict: swords and shields, bows and
arrows, military generals and armored knights.
