Artists

“Do you know the moment before you are fully awake in the morning?

As you wake up from a deep REM sleep, you are awake, but have not yet started to recognize what is in your realm, prior to resuming your waking routine. Are you still dreaming? Can you control your body? You are not sure of the two worlds – where one starts and the other stops.

This is a moment of transition, before any movement is understood, a second before the chaos gets organized.

In Italian we have this word sovrappensiero “above thought.” When you are looking at someone in this state, they appear to be, for the instant, above time. As when you are tired and thinking of something and your eyes are not responding to any external stimuli. In English you might say absent-minded.

As you try to make sense of the inner anarchy of the unconscious, your perceptions reorder themselves into something more coherent.

I am interested in the unconscious gesture, the pre-deliberate gesture, the unintended gesture. I am interested in the origin of things before consciousness gets involved, the first impulses of a body, which paradoxically come from the mind, but which have raced ahead before you realize it is happening – before concepts are formed.

Within this neurological awakening of perceptions is, I feel, the spot where I can discover the precursors of thoughts – the esprit – the energy that erupts before being channeled into action…before realizing the limitations…my limitations, such as blindness or loss of memory.

What is moving about that process is that it is the same starting point for each one of us, an equal playing field.

What does this have to do with photographs of plants?

The series of images I started to make in 2004 were called “as above.” In them, plants are preserved, as in a kind of living herbarium. Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) were the inspiration for this way of making pictures.

These pictures seemed to me to illustrate the echo to and fro between my mind and my visual perception of the outer world created by it. They are made to evoke the inside of my brain drawn with harmonious elements from nature into a kind of brain scan. Between inside and outside, a kind of limbo state is set up, without giving one the chance to take the lead first.

Making these images asks for my persistence and not my linear thinking, which is less important. Getting into a rhythm, observing, but with all of the senses present reinvents the relationship of my body and the environment.

I realize that all of these words suggest images densely packed with information, but, conversely, what you see are a kind of shorthand, brief slashes across the white sky. I only want to retain what is vital and necessary: from landscape to time passing to rhythm, as I look for the right note.”

Christian Erroi

July, 2015

Christian Erroi, a Swiss and Italian artist based in New York, is a 2013 graduate of the ICP/Bard MFA program and a 2001 graduate of the ICP General Studies program. Solo shows of his work in recent years include those at Cons Arc in Chiasso, Switzerland, the New York Public Library’ Mid-Manhattan Library, Margaret Poissant Gallery in Houston, Texas, and in 2009 he was a featured artist in the LiShui Photo Festival in China, curated by Evan Mirapaul.

Christian was twice selected for the Art + Commerce Emerging Artist exhibitions, the second of which, curated by Charlotte Cotton, traveled to Tokyo, Milan, Madrid, London and Stockholm. In 2015 Erroi was one of the artists in the International Center of Photography exhibition called The Future is Forever curated by Jorge Alberto Perez at Mana Contemporary. Christian’s artist books include “as above,” “wave,” “Apulia,” “Alp/Brian,” “Gioppino,” and “digit,” a book that was selected for the 2013 ICP Triennial artist book reading room.

His work is in private collections worldwide, and in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY, the Museo Cantonale di Lugano, and the Musée de l’Elysée Lausanne in Switzerland.

2013 “Good good good. Good,” ICP/Bard MFA Studios, NY, USA

2010 “Leads and Traces,” New York Public Library, New York, NY, USA

2008 “Hemianopia / Agnosia”, Poissant Gallery/FotoFest, Houston, TX, USA

2007 “as above,” Cons Arc, Chiasso, Tessin, Switzerland

2003 “Paesaggi,” Il Raggio Gallery, Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland

1998 “Barche al Macello,” Macello Communale, Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland

2015 “The Future is Forever,” Mana Contemporary & International Center for Photography, Jersey

City, NJ, USA

2013 “ICP Triennial: A Different Kind of Order [Artist Book Reading Room],” International Center for

Photography, New York, NY, USA

2013 “Enter from Above,” International Center for Photography Rita K. Hillman Gallery, New York, NY,

USA

2010 “Nature Within,” 25 CPW, New York, NY, USA

2010 “Swiss Art and Other Machinations,” Governors Island, New York, NY, USA

2009 “Perspective,” Lishui International Photography Culture Festival, Lishui, China

2009 “Transmutations – Abstractions in Nature”, Michael Mazzeo Gallery, New York, NY, USA

2008 “now you see it now you don’t,” Camera Club Gallery, New York, NY, USA

2007 “Camera Club Benefit Auction,” Peer Gallery, New York, NY, USA

2006 “Photo-London,” Marla Hamburg Kennedy, London, UK

2006 “Art & Commerce Festival of Emerging Photographers,” Milan, Italy

2006  “Art & Commerce Festival of Emerging Photographers,” Tokyo, Japan

2005 “Art & Commerce Festival of Emerging Photographers,” New York, NY, USA

2005 “ Arles Photo Festival,” International Center of Photography, Arles, France

2004 “Art & Commerce Festival of Emerging Photographers,” New York, NY, USA

2004 “Parchi Natura”, Maghetti Quarter, Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland

2004  “The Image World,” International Center of Photography, New York, NY, USA

2003 “Move,” The Knitting Factory, New York, NY, USA

2003 “Once Upon a Time,” Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, NY, USA

2002 “Life in the City”, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA

2015 Erroi, Christian. Gioppino. (New York: Self-published)

2014  Identities Now: contemporary portrait photography, edited by Tim Blanks & Peter Hay Halpert

(New York: PHH)

2013 Erroi, Christian. Digit. (New York: Self-published)

2012 Erroi, Christian. Alp/Bryan. (New York: Self-published)

2008 “Creating with Vegetable Tools,” L’Uomo Vogue, July-August, No 392

2008  FotoFest 08 Participating Spaces Catalogue (Houston, TX)

2007  Erroi, Christian. as above. (New York: Self-published)

2007 “Scatti di Coscienza,” D: La Repubblica delle Donna, No. 531, 13 January

2005 Peek: The Art + Commerce Festival of Emerging Photographers (New York: Art + Commerce)

2005 Sonrian! Photography Magazine (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

2003 Photography Quarterly (Woodstock, New York)

2002 Berlingske Tidende (Copenhagen, Denmark), 29 March

1997 Problemica Magazine (Ticino,Switzerland)

2012/13 Director’s Grant Scholarship / ICP-Bard

2000/01 Via Wynroth Scholarship / International Center of Photography