The sculpture hangs on the wall: a sprawling world, a warning, a revelation, a vision of a collective soul. From afar, the composition is what is striking, formally balanced, playful yet contained and graceful. It beckons, drawing the viewer into its tangle of meaning, history unfolding in its depths and reverence discovered within the assortment of invented iconography. This sculpture has it all--imagined conquests, sex and death, a hero’s hubris-filled demise, navel gazing and oblivion, tragic characters reliving the mistakes humanity continues to make, the quest, the vision, the warrior, the prophet, the mystic, the child—archetypes that you attach to, project yourself onto, archetypes that litter history and continue to fascinate in different contexts. This sculpture is a whole new framework for something that feels entirely too familiar. The closer the viewer moves, the more entranced they become. The intricate details of the assemblage bring to life the nuances of the narrative, and it becomes clear, that every one of the thousands of pieces within was chosen, plucked from this vast world of material objects, and placed with intention in the context of the sculpture. Though thousands of decisions were made for this one sculpture, they unify in a lucid, baroque harmony.

Kris Kuksi’s process is entirely his own. It starts with the spark of an idea usually encountered in the early hours of the morning when the work is humming, some flotsam rising up from his rich personal history, usually something iconoclastic, earnest, and loaded with paradox. He’ll catch a glimpse and the image will burn itself into his mind long enough for him to bring it into existence.

“The sculptures take hours, weeks, and sometimes months to complete and sometimes
I work fourteen to sixteen hours a day, but it all seems to go by so fast.”