Christian Faur
Tuesday May 4, 2010 at 8:00PM
While exploring Chelsea’s art district in early February, I came across an artist whose concepts struck me as particularly interesting and visionary. The pieces were small; measuring just over a square foot, but the way in which the images were created fascinated me. The artist; Christian Faur, uses hand casted encaustic crayons to arrange pixelated copies of depression era photographs of human busts. From a far, it was impossible to tell what the crayon heads were because they caused my eyes to focus on the image rather than the individual “pixels” represented by the crayons. When I looked up close at the seemingly dull-themed pieces, I was intrigued more than I have been in quite some time as to the vision and detail that went into these unique and incredible pieces. When I got home, I looked into the artists’ other work, and found that this is not the only original visionary medium he works in. Within some of his crayon pieces, Faur has encoded an incredible “color-alphabet” system, in which he translates the English alphabet into colors, and includes strings of text within the pieces. Another interesting concept he has created and mastered is cutting up newspaper bits and rearranging them into black and white photographic representations. Some of Christian Faur’s Crayon Series pieces can be seen on the first floor of the gallery at 529 West 20th Street in Manhattan. The building has 9 floors, and has other great exhibits including the Bitforms exhibit on the 2nd floor, which is a MUST if you decide to visit.