Kevin Christison’s sculpture is figurative, though is more about the nature of the human body in general than particular individuals and their bodies. His bodies are often partial or truncated, cleft or riven. Their flesh rendered like a vulnerable armour that is only too easy to roll back. There are several places to look for reasons for this. As a former college football player Kevin is very aware of the drama, even the art, of the body in action; the art of putting your body on the line. From his study of art history Kevin also developed a particular interest in ancient Greek figures and Roman busts. Not so much as they were, that is, when they were intact, but rather, what has come down to us – pieces and fragments of sculpture. Partial bodies and heads, incompletely representing Greek and Roman aesthetics; fractured expressions of human emotions, disembodied repose, and physical drama. He doesn’t just take away though, he also gives back, or at least reveals. Bodies exhibit skeletal elements, however these only superficially resemble human structures.

These structures are about the act of sculpting itself – its mechanics, the fabrication processes, and crucially the element of chance. He preserves the unintended or overlooked signs of the artist’s hands and tools in what at first is the malleable materials clay or wax, by allowing these to be permanently fixed in the metal. But foremost, he includes or reveals as part of the finished sculpture the structures (the armatures), required to hold the sculpture together as the clay is worked on. In more monumental works the fabrication process itself becomes part of the work; structural elements that might be needed to hold a finished bronze together, are evident. These elements are deliberately exposed or represented in the finished work, unlike the titanium that is hidden, when inserted into athletes bodies and joints to repair injuries. The significance of other sculptural elements remain more obscure as perhaps they should be. Objects appear driven into the flesh, into heads. Perhaps in the sense of ‘I’ll knock some sense into you yet’, that old educationalists expression? They protrude and intrude like signs for the events in the life of the figure or subject represented, doubly reinforcing the signs marking the events in the life of the making of the sculpture and sculptor still in the making.

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