Christopher Richmond builds worlds that redefine themselves within and against the conventions of film, story, and shared human experience. Human and cosmic characters grapple with identity, loneliness, and nature. Terrestrial and otherworld landscapes juxtapose reality and illusion. Handmade props and highly technical photographic techniques further accentuate the gulf between the imaginary and the real. Richmond’s unique universe spans film, video, photography, and drawing. Often collaborating with the same actors and re-using props and imagery, the artist’s universe begins to assume characteristics – truths – that, like our own world, are accepted as fact. 

Richmond’s vision is the eternal search for meaning in an otherwise silent world. Film and video are perhaps the best medium for pursuing this exploration. Narrative cues often break down and reorganize into barely graspable fragments, framing its absurdist turns. His drawings function similarly by presenting multiple pictorial universes in constant kinetic interactivity. Different styles of mark-making, line thickness, and imagery cram onto a single page, which resembles the hyperactive mind at work – a sort of cosmic clippings-and-string approach to organizing information on paper.

Richmond encourages audiences to suspend their disbelief while using humor to emphasize absurd scenarios, such as his use of a Honda Civic for space travel.  By strictly adhering to certain genre traditions, both broad and specific, while gleefully trampling them in the same frame, the artist introduces worlds beyond logic and convention. His work prompts questions about the forces separating narrative fiction from nonfiction. 

Richmond’s approach to cinema and art reflects modernist and postmodernist ideas that have shaped these fields since the 20th century. Influenced by Dada and Surrealism, artists sought freedom from traditional morality, focusing on ambiguity and nuance. Richmond’s work provides clear information without a prescriptive way to interpret it, with both characters and objects often unaware of their larger roles. Unbound by traditional boundaries, Richmond’s work achieves clarity through indirectness to reveal subtle, nebulous truths in service of an ever-expanding earthbound cosmology.

Christopher Richmond (b. 1986, Solana Beach, CA) received an MFA from the University of Southern California (USC) and a BFA in Film and Media Arts from Chapman University. His works have been the subject of solo exhibitions at the gallery Moskowitz Bayse, DXIX Projects, and the Lundgren Gallery in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. His works have been included in group exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, and Vienna, Austria. His works have been included in screenings in Toronto, Canada and Los Angeles, and are in the permanent collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, and the Getty Research Institute. He lives and works in Los Angeles.