Christopher Culver’s practice revolves around the search for images that reveal traces of human presence and expose emotional qualities felt within waning American contexts. He sensitively renders vacant cityscapes, forgotten still lifes, and domestic spaces through an almost sculptural drawing process, building up and erasing layers of charcoal and pastel to create a grainy effect. These surfaces enhance the filmic quality of his darkly veiled compositions that appear distilled from a larger, unspecified narrative. Working serially, Culver repeats his surreal subjects across multiple works, offering glimpses into his own experience in New York City. He renders the architecture of intimate relationships, or lack thereof, that exist between spaces of urban alienation.

Christopher Culver (b. 1985 Miami, Florida) lives and works in New York. He received his MFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 2013 where he studied at the School of Fine Arts and School of Architecture. Culver has had solo exhibitions at Chapter NY, New York; The Meeting, New York; A.D., New York; Redling Fine Arts, Los Angeles; Yautepec, Mexico City; and Queen’s Nails Annex, San Francisco. His work has been included in exhibitions at DIANA, New York; Crèvecoeur, Paris; Michael Benevento, Los Angeles; Collaborations, Copenhagen, DNK; ECHO, Cologne, DEU; Downs & Ross, New York; Et al. etc., San Francisco; Lomex, New York; and Page Gallery, New York, among others. Culver will have a solo exhibition at Michael Benevento, Los Angeles, opening June 2024.