christian faur

one of the joys of having family that lives in columbus, ohio, is that while visiting, i always have the luxury of enjoying the city's art district, otherwise known as the 'short north.' a little over a year ago i took a road trip with one of my best friends up north to visit my family, and we decided to explore the artsy area. to our surprise, we happened to explore at the right time because the district was having its monthly 'gallery hop.' the short north is known for its over abundance in art galleries and once a month they open up the galleries for famous and upcoming artists to show off their unique work. its an all night event and thousands and thousands of people walk the streets, enjoy lovely art, and eat in delightful restaurants.
while gallery hopping, we managed to run across the most brilliant of artists, his name is christian faur. his style is unique in that he uses hand cast crayons as 'pixels' to develop to create breathtaking imagery. i considered summarizing his explaination on his personal website, but he does it so elegantly, i wouldn't want to down play the detail he puts into his work. he explains it like this,

"These individual “pixels” of wax are precisely stacked into specific locations inside of wooden frames to produce a new art form that uniquely balances the qualities of both photography and sculpture. Further, I have developed a mapping system that translates the English alphabet into twenty six discrete colors and I use these crayon “fonts” to add words and language to each of the pieces in the show.

The product is a series of photorealistic landscapes and figurative images that are formed at the surface of the thousands of tightly packed crayon tips. The imagery that makes up this new body tends to focus on isolated elements represented as children, barns, water towers, etc. withinin determinate landscapes, which are intended to reference the individual crayon whose solitary existence, like that of the individual element, is rendered obsolete in the amalgamate. The direct representation of language in each piece further imbues the works with meaning and brings an aspect of color into each composition reminiscent of DNA coding. The alphabetic key at the lower left of each panel allows the viewer to interpret the individual words written throughout the various panels."

no more explaination needed. this man is a brilliant artist. his work is unlike any other i have ever seen.

photo captions: from top to bottom- untitled 6500. mortgage on the future. the dance I. the hours.