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| Chris Fiore, Mistress 45, photomontage print edition, 1986 |
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| Chris Fiore, Collapse, photomontage print edition, 1986 |
Chris Fiore joins our gallery on the strength of a group of 150 photomontages that he created in the late 1980s. Some of these pieces we carry as limited-edition prints that can be purchased at our online store. Fiore took an Xacto-blade to fashion advertisements and to classic modern work by Man Ray and others, and came up with his disembodied images of "missing people" in strange settings. It was a common postmodern strategy at the time, to manipulate and otherwise "subvert" existing art and imagery. But "under Fiore's knife" something else happened as well. The pictures revealed a world that is unearthly and unprecedented, even as it is derivative. In this regard the Fiore montages of the 80s are an example of the transition from postmodernism to the neo-formalism, or what I call synthetic art, that is emblematic of the Brooklyn scene in the late 80s and early 90s. We deal with this transition in Robert Egert's morphopolis, in which Fiore participated as guest artist.
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| Chris Fiore, Strange Days, photomontage print edition, 1988 |
Fiore was living in Williamsburg at about the time he made this series. He was arguably the first cyberpunk in the nascent scene. He arrived early and left early, but lived large while he was in Brooklyn. That is to say, he lived alone on an enormous factory floor in a fallow industrial neighborhood, literally like a character in the movie Bladerunner. In his work from that time, we see a collision of deconstructive impulses of lower Manhattan with the shape-shiftings of the "synthetic turn" in Brooklyn.
artist's website
morphopolis, Oct-Dec 2015
visit Chris Fiore's work at our online store
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| Chris Fiore, Crouching Figure photomontage print edition, 1988 |
Filmmaker and artist Chris Fiore, born 1959 in Norfolk, Virginia, received his BFA from Antioch College in 1984. In the late 80s he was one of the founders of the Zone, an artist collective occupying an abandoned warehouse at 104 South 4th St, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Fiore showed at KOAP gallery in the early 90s and in 1995 he directed the underground documentary Trip and Go Naked,
winner of the Excellence in Sexual Theater award at Arlene’s Grocery Picture Show.
Best known for his 2000 documentary chronicling Jay Z’s historic Hard Knock Life Tour. Fiore has produced, directed, and edited 4 feature documentaries and numerous short films. Fiore’s film work has directly influenced his art over the years, in his use of appropriated imagery as an editorial conceit, presentation of sequential images, and the cinematically dynamic composition of his mosaic photography.
The Occupation of New York: RNC 2004, a short film documenting several protests surrounding the Republican National Convention at New York's Madison Square Garden, was produced and directed by Fiore through his company, Parallel Universe, and was an Official Selection at the East Village City film Festival in 2006. Here is a partial list of Fiore's filmography.
The artists we exhibit are not contractually bound to our gallery, and we encourage curators and collectors to contact them directly to make inquiries and purchases. Additionally, we carry works by these artists for sale through our gallery.
