IDOLS OF ART WALK: Kris Ohlinger

Kris Ohlinger

• Age: 25
• Home town: Mission, TX
• Influences:
• Persons of local repute: Will Martin, Dick Hyslin and my parents Krysti Davis and Michael Ohlinger; Pop: Flits that leave traces in my distracted scan through of art magazines, museums, the internet; Chiefly: Extra-artistic concepts, propensities, and inclinations, whose tangential nucleation fosters unbounded artistic exploration with welcome feedback.
• Upcoming shows: Will be showcasing a pedicab/mobile-gallery during 08/09 artwalk season. Not so much a show as it is a showing. I think I might make a silly hat to wear.
• Website: www.krisoh.com

Tell me about non-composition and the role of language in your work. You pieces seem to discuss how parts influence and whole. Can you tell me more about how that influences your work?

Non-compostition was my first solo show thankfully hosted at Manichaus, modern art space.The show was about relational networks and the consequences of individuation sparked by a dazed moment lost in the cover of the composition book containing my research notes. The composition book became a symbol for my endeavors to deepen understanding (or at least expand the hole by which to view the abyss). A common component to this venture is the partitioning of problems and subset analysis. The deconstructive approach struck me as something worth scrutiny one day whilst loosing myself in the cover of my composition book. Realizing that a meta-analysis of my research would not be tolerated by my funding overseers, I opted to take it to my clandestine research program: d'art. For this show the subject was typically expansive such that language was but one of many tools used. Language was not a focus of pontification but rather a pontificated focus.The dichotomy of parts/wholes was central to the non-composition show and much of my experiments. I am fascinated at the intractable nature in which parts, of any system, seemingly transcend their participation towards the emergence of global properties. General systems theories I suspect shall in some regard continue to be a welcome concept of investigation.

What is your inspiration for your work?

Inspiration lies in the anticipation of coupling elements which have grown within reach of each other but require additional assistance in the formation of a presumed exhilarating linkage. Inspiration lies in the pursuit of originality, almost to the point of being contrary. And inspiration lies in delusions of grandeur, and the casting of experiments towards that goal in a soft environ fostering of attempts.

What is the most interesting experience you've had while presenting your art?

Whilst attempting to chase down a verbal explanation for the sculptures that made up the Gnott series portion of the non-composition show, a distance grew between the audience and I (seeded by the spotlight both figurative and literal} on me and the arc of audience set back in the darkness). This distance begat a free-form isolation amidst my conceptual framework, disparate from my conscious participation in the shared reality. There I tumbled, trying to link words to that which I associated with the question regarding the sculptures. At the onset of a faltered stream of description I descended back into awareness to find my audience unmoving, unmoved. Upon realization that I had wholly failed in communicating, I felt an amazing deflation, an urgent sense of insignificance, and finally an exhilarating sensation of reality. It was so kind of those people to allow me to try in front of them.

Who would you most like to give a piece of your artwork to?

I would most like to give a piece of my artwork to and unmanned space flight. I think the void might have an appreciation (a kind of echoed ambivalence) for what I have done with some time.

 What is the most expressive color?

I have yet to hit upon a point in my artistic travels in which color is of primary importance to me. In my mind, our narrow sensitivity to the expansive spectrum trivializes color for my purposes. That and my conception of expressiveness makes context requisite such that a color must be defined relative to some neighborhood. Also my aims are to treat multidimensional subjects and I think that color has a way of blinding some spectators to a possibly more suggestive depth.