Bio

Christina Shurts earned her MFA degree at CSULB and BA at UC Irvine and has since shown her work in New York, Los Angeles and London. She has been included in numerous group shows including those at the Torrance Art Museum (CA), Pacific Design Center (CA), LA Municipal Art Gallery (CA), SCOPE Art Fair (NY), Lawrence Asher Gallery (CA), LOFT Gallery (CA), I-5 Gallery (CA), and Saatchi Gallery (London, UK) Showdown Exhibition. Within the last year her work has been included in two New American Paintings annuals (No. 87 & No. 91). Her East Coast solo debut opens at RARE Gallery (March, 2011). Shurts lives and works in Long Beach, CA with her loving family and three silly dogs.

ARTIST STATEMENT

The paintings of Christina Shurts explore the human condition. This current series has honed in on the condition of nostalgia, both for the recollected past and an idealized future. In these paintings images of peculiar spaces are homes to uncanny getaways. Flying ships, tree houses, shacks with chandeliers all are transformed into forgotten vacationlands. The time seems to fix around a pre or post utopic event. Perhaps after the dinner party or before the launch, some instance which has a longing for another time. These mental investigations utilize a trove of images from memory, film, personal photographs, the imagined and even modern home décor magazines to approach the philisophical questions. What, now, is luxury and if it is a getaway or even just a daydream from the everyday, does a dark side to this longing creep through? Ultimately, the paintings aim to be a depot for these concerns and others whilst tackling the challenge of gooey paint balanced atop a canvas.