John Christensen
Category: Artist/Individual
Discipline: Visual arts
John Christensen - BIO
John Christensen is an artist working in Austin, Texas. Before 1990, he sited ephemeral works in rural landscapes of New York, Georgia and Texas. Since 1990, he has focused that sensibility on projects for theatre and for more permanent installations in the public place - often collaborating with choreographers and other design professionals, and, working with unique architectural spaces - making environments for 30 theatrical productions presented worldwide and installing 20 large commissions throughout the USA. First felt, later thought - the objects he sculpts provoke visceral responses and shifts in attention. In recent sculptures and reliefs he has evoked organic systems - fractals, biotic colonies, neural networks, wave interference patterns - to make poetic connections between phenomena in disparate fields. He exploits old and new technologies. He sustains a studio practice, going to his studio most days to make things.
concrete 24 x 30 x 80 ft 1999
commission for the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Austin, TX
cast concrete sculptures and landscaping
Abstracted airborne plant-forms – a pod, a leaf and a winged seed – occupy an atrium at an international airport. Landscaping used shade tolerant native plants.
steel, oiled finish 5 x 6 x 6 ft 2018
commission for 801 Barton Springs Road, Austin, TX
steel sculpture on an urban sidewalk
Tumble’s restless form animates and complements the office building’s riparian theme.