As a child, artist Christopher Rivera wandered the interior design warehouse showrooms where his mother worked. He took in the decorative clocks, baseball gloves and spice boxes. He wondered about the prop objects made to look like real housewares. How long had they been stored away? Did a child ever use this toy? What kind of people once owned these pieces?
Shaped by these questions, Rivera finds that consumerism remains at the core of his paintings. His “Batteries Not Included” exhibit at the Artport Gallery this fall explores his relationship to toys, Americana and nostalgia.
“I’m always in this strange moral position,” says Rivera. “People make toys to sell to children but on other hand they make cool stuff that everyone loves. I like finding the positives to the negative aspects of western commercialism.”
Rivera is currently an MFA art candidate at Florida State University. He achieves a balance between the commercial and nostalgic by painting collages of toys and unique knickknacks with lightheartedness and deep thought. Some have likened his work to “I Spy” books as their eyes travel across his painted shadow boxes and still-lifes.
Influenced by the work of Tom Wesselmann, a collage artist during the Pop Art movement, Rivera is interested in observing and working with a landscape of objects. He’s also looked at the work of former FSU professor Robert Fichter. Fichter photographed boxes filled with wacky figurines, stuffed toys and more, and Rivera aspires to work in a similar fashion.
“I like to throw in enough elements so that I’m not creating a narrative,” says Rivera. “I like making guess work for the viewer.”
Rivera earned his bachelor’s degree from UCF where he learned the foundations of observational painting and drawing. This approach asks the artist to look at objects abstractly rather than dividing them into logical parts.
His art making also builds on the traditions of Kimon Nicolaides’ “The Natural Way to Draw” and Betty Edwards’ “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.” For Rivera it’s not about replicating the objects perfectly. Instead, he makes choices about what to include in the overall composition.
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