grafik affects

“It’s like a church in here…” says a fellow visitor to his friend at the Buxton Contemporary art museum, his voice zooming around the polished space. He’s right, and I had been extremely self-conscious of my own squeaking shoes moments earlier, thinking I had been alone in the room.

The quietness is often in sharp contrast to Christensen’s work, which is frequently buzzing with frenetic composition. And not just her painting work, but her sculptures as well — Back Chat (2019), a trio of cymbals facing upwards towards a handful of colourful suspended drumsticks, appeared at first like a theoretical suggestion of sound in the otherwise silent room, until I inevitably did pull that lever that hangs nearby. As those drumsticks collided with the cymbals, I am certain that the corresponding adrenaline punch that followed shortened my lifespan momentarily, and added a few grey hairs to my beard. I was totally endeared to it.

This inclination towards carefully controlled chaos is exhibited frequently in Christensen’s painted work. Steady (2014) is a standout favourite, and I wish it had been placed in a more front-and-centre position in the gallery, rather than tucked away on the second floor. Christensen captures the wood grain facade of a building (her painting of wood textures is a regular motif and often stunning) backed by green foliage, and then immediately duplicates it, as if allowing for a collision between the literal sight of the building and the memory of its image, with both versions becoming as real and as warped as each other. The black and white chevroned curtains that drape the windows are transgressive in their attempt to command the direction of the image — it goes up, it goes down, the colour contrast lending an increasingly jagged, unhinged quality to the overall structure of the image. There is a whisper of Black Lodge in the aesthetic. And still there is more. On top, at the surface of the image, a collision of card tables, in semi-transparent powder-pink, lying like a web. Depth and perspective become increasingly ambiguous, the distortion producing an illusion of simultaneous flatness and deepness. I adore visual work that plays with structure and expectation with such considered glee. This image is fun, it’s complicated, it’s pleasurable, it’s messy, it’s controlled. The capacity for an artist to juggle so much is a testament to Christensen’s experience, taste, and (heaven forbid!) sense of fun.

A sibling to this painting is Where Looking Feels Like Thinking (Expect Delays) (2020-2023). In the hands of a less experienced artist, a scene of a smashed up glass bus station would rely on the supposed shock of the image alone, but it would be far too obvious, too expected — even lazy. Christensen instead turns it into a game of visual logic, pulling our eye first to the centre, and the exploding it outwards, each line of cautionary red and white tape line a candy-cane arrow, entangled in the metal debris that is clearly desperate to escape the frame and tumble out into the infinite blue of the background. The framing of the exterior foliage and pavement is similarly exploded, with bold and sharp lines re-enforcing that gravity to sits of the center of the image. It is an image that is as loud as those cymbals of Back Chat, but Christensen’s hand is on the lever, and pulls it with precise exactitude. The resulting noise is startling, but entirely controlled.

There is quietude elsewhere, to balance the space. Tomorrow, This Week (2005) is a delectably intimate domestic scene, a corner of the living room complete with fluffy rug, a crumpled, earthy throw blanket, a sour-polymer coloured radiator topped with a smattering of vibrant postcards, and a KONKA television set showing the weather report. While there is no explosion of imagery as per elsewhere, there is no shortage of controlled detail. The curtains, with their subtle folds and shadows. The knit pattern and kaleidoscope colours of the throw. Every articulated, invitingly-pushable button on the television and set-top-box. The mild but essential side table (tables another regular feature of Christensen’s paintings). Whether an experimentation with visual structure and visual logic, or a subtly pensive scene, be it representational or more abstract, is always balanced. Nothing ever feels out of place, with every element carefully considered in its placement, scale. Every visual relationship make sense.

Less to my taste are Christensen’s fly themed paintings, they often felt like more of an after-thought in the company of other such exquisite depictions of space. That said, the painting Outside Space (2019) marries its insect subject matter with such a sickly, poisonous olive colour, that I cannot help but be impressed by the deliberate ugliness of the work. Somehow, it remains understated and firmly in hand, Christensen allowing for visual disgust, but entirely on her own terms. It’s impressive.

And so, Christensen’s images live on in my mind in the days following my visit, echoing and colliding in various ways, dropping in like drumsticks. I do hope she continues to pursue her interest in marrying chaos and control, it is yielding such exciting results. The Buxton church is hers, and I am lighting a candle.