Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Fox Gilson
Hi Chris Fox, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
WELCOME TO MY ART OF DISRUPTION
ART A: CHRIS FOX GILSON PROFILE SHOT
I never attended art school or learned to paint or sculpt. But since I became an artist 16 months ago, my work has been exhibited, sold, and favorably notIced from Los Angeles to Miami to Dubai.
What’s my secret?
It seems that people everywhere relate to my “disruptive” art about our relationship with technology, which improves our lives by leaps and bounds. But its constant demand for radical change causes rifts in our lives, too.
ART B: CHRIS WITH SALON BAND (CAPTION: In Salon Band from my Old Masters 2.0 series, I imagined that composer Franz Schubert discovered Garage Band software and turned the polite Schubertiade salon painted by Schmid into a raucous early version of a Stones concert.)
Over my career as ad agency Creative Director, filmmaker, virtual reality evangelist, author of business textbooks and speculative fiction sold to Hollywood, I championed innovations that changed our most stubbornly-held attitudes and behavior, sometimes radically.
Now I use my lesson learned to create conceptual art that puts those disruptions in human perspective with imagination and humor. I started by going way back in time…
While growing up in New York City, I was force-marched through museums to see the great painters known as “Old Masters,” Years later, I realized that they were first to capture the human effects of radical change 500 years ago.
Their subjects’ Medieval minds and bodies confronted new values and inventions of the Enlightenment and Renaissance, enduring the same sort of wrenching changes we go through today. They inspired my first series, Old Masters 2.0, imagining those same protagonists greeting our modern technology.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
5,000,000 WORTHY ARTISTS + 1 ARTIST OF DISRUPTION
A new artist could easily get discouraged by the tsumani of worldwide competition. Five million working artists compete for attention from critics and collectors in the global marketplace.
But I’ll never enter my art in the Venice Biennale… or myself in the Olympics for the same reason. My work isn’t comparable to the kind of artwork vying for critical acclaim.
Instead, each of my speculative fiction pieces is a true “conversation piece,” designed as an instant visual story you can put on your wall to enjoy, knowing that it will also prompt comments that start interesting discussions.
ART C: CRISTINA’S WORLD. (CAPTION: In my Cristina’s World of Prime, Hopper’s fragile heroine vastly improves her material world through the immediate gratification of Amazon Prime.)
Most collectors display my pieces the same way I exhibit them at events, to make an iimpact from across a room with innovations like backlighting and embedded video.
Each image in the Old Masters 2.0 and Old Masters of A.I. series is printed on a special transparency, LED-backlit in an ultrathin frame to make colors more vibrant. You control brightness with a dimmer on the electrical cord that plugs into any standard outlet.
For my new Auteurs of AI series, the main image is printed on acrylic with a looped video embedded to run continuously within the artwork.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
MIAMI’S OLDEST LIVING EMERGING ARTIST TELLS ALL
ART D: CHRIS IN HIS TROPICAL STUDIO (CAPTION: Only in Miami can a Conceptual Artist like me build an outdoor studio to be inspired by the skies, sun, and surf while working on my laptop yet never escaping my WiFi that can suddenly disconnect me in the middle of a creation).
I love the energy of Miami’s vibrant culture that’s made our city ground zero for creative people from all over the world. And I’m especially grateful for the warm and welcoming art community for exhibiting and encouraging me in my work.
ART E: APPLE GARDEN (CAPTION: In AppleGarden from my Old Masters 2.0 series, the Serpent tempts Adam and Eve with Apple VisionPro instead of an ordinary fruit, with the unintended consequence that all denizens of the Garden get too distracted to commit Original Sin.)
Miami Gallerist/Curator Fernando Fernandez saw my piece AppleGarden in September 2023 and offered to represent me.
Gallerist German Chavez gave me my first show at Colour Senses in October, selling two of my pieces as visitors were drawn to the LED-backlit Apple Garden and Bocaccio’s Podcast.
Then art impresario Jason Perez asked me to exhibit with his Collection at Red Dot/Spectrum during Miami Art Week 2023. All his exciting young artists were there…and me!
That’s where I began to think of myself as Miami’s Oldest Living “Emerging” Artist.
ART F: COVER ‘CFG BEST ARTIST/ ART BASEL ISSUE’ (CAPTION: Seeing my work at Red Dot/Spectrum during Miami Art Week, Art Estate magazine named me “Best Artist” of its Art Basel edition.)
Over the course of ten group and solo shows in 2024, I introduced my next series Old Masters of AI. It imagined that Renaissance polymath Leonardo DaVinci secretly invented computing and generative artificial intelligence (AI) to perfect his other machine and robotics designs, then left it as his anonymous gift to future artists such as Van Gogh and Dali to enhance their own masterworks.
To confirm my theory, note that “DaVinci” brands a leading AI art program today. Having egos of their own, I supposed that Van Gogh renamed his AI program “Night Café” and Dali called his “Dall-E,” both popular with AI artists.)
ART G: LEONARDO’S SECRET (CAPTION: I theorized that DaVinci invented AI to turn his flying machine into a passenger airliner, perfect his Giaconda artwork for a life in museums, and protect Florence with a battle tank.
I wanted people who engaged with the series to consider AI from two different points of view…
First, the existential question: Will AI be the artist’s tool or Terminator? In my view, art is more a feeling medium than a thinking one. While AI may evolve to closely mimic the process of human creativity, it can never grow a human heart with its unique emotional life that informs all great art.
Then, the critical question: How will we evaluate art now that some or all of an artist’s work may be machine made?
To use a restaurant analogy, some critics consider the chef’s identity, the ingredients used, the amount of time and effort spent in the kitchen, and other “manufacturing” variables to grade what’s placed in front of the guest. I say we should let the guest make that evaluation based on the quality of his/her experience. Do they want to laugh? Cry? Consider a new perspective? Wonder about the subjects or worry what will happen to them?
ART H: CHRIS AT MIFA EXHIBITION (CAPTION: I introduced my Old Masters of AI series in Miami International Fine Art’s impressive gallery with other MiFa artists. )
That’s why I love to go to my exhibitions and meet visitors, to see if they’re enjoying and finding value in my work. And why I go along when my work is installed at a buyer’s home or business, to make sure they’re satisfied and answer any questions they have.
For guests unfamiliar with generative AI, I stage demonstration with my Night Café account to let them prompt and create their own artwork to keep. )
Marco Caridad, Creative Director of Miami International Fine Arts (MiFa) honored me with a prominent space in a group show featuring its well-known artists and an Artist in Residence studio. Invitations to exhibit in South Florida, Oxford, U.K., Paris, and Doja, Qatar exposed my work to international audiences.
For Miami Art Week 2024, I exhibited in Context/Art Miami and introduced my new extension of the series called Auteurs of AI, in which DaVinci’s AI program empowers famed directors such as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and Walt Disney to enhance their innovations for the silver screen.
ART I: WALT’S AI-PIPHANY (CAPTION: I imagined that Walt Disney used DaVinci’ AI secret and some clever prommpts to create the world’s most famous mouse, with video embedded so the cartoon runs continuously in the print image.)
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
To me, success means having my artwork enjoyed and discussed by people who share my sensibilities and sense of humor. I’m particularly pleased when it’s collected by people I admire for their own accomplishments, including the visionaries behind the innovations that I use myself for fun and profit.
For instance, I’m ecstatic that my Bocaccio’s Podcast is in the corporate studio at Spotify, the pre-eminent music and podcast streamer, that Salon Band looks over the bar in the Armstrong Jazz House, whose owner Alfred Santamaria loves great jazz, food, and art,. and that my Walt’s AI-piphany is winging its way to the Muse frame headquarters, developers of the digital screen for artists like me to use video and sound to execute concepts formerly filed under “Impossible Dreams.”
Pricing:
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Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.chrisfoxgilson.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisfoxgilson/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chris.f.gilson/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisfoxgilson/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChM6x8Qgve4ACCIFR_2zUAg/videos
- Other: See mundoartegallery.com and https://www.singulart.com/en/artist/chris-fox-gilson-57117?ref=ts
