Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to announce White Noise, a solo exhibition of new work by Christian Eckart.

This new series explores climate change as both the subject and object of the pieces. Throughout Eckart’s career he has been interested in the articulation of a meta-sublime in the form of his painting/sculpture hybrids. As he further developed this interconnection and new style of digital work for White Noise, native correlations began to unfold between climate issues and tropes of the romantic sublime in Western painting - e.g.; mountains, waterfalls, sunsets, etc.

For the works in this exhibition Eckart has digitally voided, with semi-transparent white, much of the beauty found in images very carefully sourced from the internet. The images depict subjects replete with their own iconological arc; originating in 18th and 19th century romantic enlightenment painting, later evolving into primary subject matter at the advent of photography, then to picture postcard fodder in the 20th century, thereafter exploited as backdrops and locations for print and television advertisements and finally as motifs of 21st century Instagram posts.

In White Noise, Eckart is re-presenting romantic sublime imagery for the purpose of reconsidering its primal power specifically in the context of the potential extinction of the human species as a result of climate change. Without humankind, who will be left to appreciate, collect, and share the Earth's ineffable beauty and awesome grandeur?

The exhibition title is an acknowledgement to the profound impact Don DeLillo's 1985 novel by the same name, and presenting similar undercurrents, had on the artist many years earlier.

Canadian born (Calgary, Alberta, 1959, American citizenship since 1995) international artist Christian Eckart, formerly based in New York (1984-2003), settled in Houston, Texas at the beginning of 2003. During the 20 years he lived in NYC and up to the present Eckart’s work has been the subject of over 60 solo exhibitions, including many museum surveys, and has been included in over 150 group exhibitions. His work is represented in many important private and public permanent collections including those of The Guggenheim Museum, N.Y., The Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., Museum ModernerKunst, Vienna, The Chicago Art Institute, The Detroit Institute of Art, the Broad Art Foundation and The Art Gallery of Ontario as well as many others throughout North America, Europe and Asia. With regard to Los Angeles, Eckart’s work has been collected in-depth by The Eli and Edythe Broad Collection and can be found in other important LA based collections. Eckart’s work was included in the Color & Form exhibition curated by Franklin Sirmans in 2010 at LACMA in relation to the work of Blinky Palermo which also included works by Peter Halley, Gunther Forg, John McCracken, among others. Eckart was an instructor at The School of Visual Art, NY, from 1994 through 2002, the Glassell School of Art of The Museum of Fine Art Houston 2003 - 2005 and he has held visiting professorships at both the University of Houston and Rice University. He has lectured extensively throughout North America and Europe, realized many public and private commissions, organized group exhibitions and published a number of essays and articles.