Les Christensen’s work uses the objects of everyday life to offer a vision of universal experience and common responsibility. In World View, for instance, a mirror and its complex historical symbolism challenge the viewer’s individual isolation. Standing in front of this mirrored piece, I face my own image and, forced to reflect, I construct a larger worldview that transcends my limited vision and temporal experience.
Meaning in Christensen’s work emerges through the deliberate pairing of simple but unexpected materials and longstanding metaphors. What does it mean to cover a heart with handles of ceramic coffee mugs? How does that meaning change if the handles are replaced with carpet tacks or broken shards of glass? Such metaphors give myths and rituals their literal substance; yet infuse them with new meaning. Flight From Servitude is thus a mythical and ritual object. Silverware, symbolic of the mundane, is fashioned into an apparatus that transports the viewer to a life of greater purpose. The wings promise, perhaps, a transformation of domestic exercise into a ritual of human growth.
Joe Ford (from “World View”, an essay written to accompany an exhibition of the same name at Ispace, in Chicago, Illinois.)