Press Release

Mrs. is excited to share a solo presentation of new works by Chris Bogia, for NADA Miami, 2018.  Between large scale sculpture and delicate watercolor illustrations, these new works reflect Bogia’s ongoing interest between interior design, decorative art and queer spaces.  

Within his practice, Bogia employs many strategies and materials often utilized by interior designers.  Unbridled by the confines of a client or the constructs of a prescribed space, Bogia’s works refer to the decorative and the contemporary, both physically and psychologically.  Within his watercolors on paper, an ongoing conflict between these two forces is depicted. Framed by a traditional archway, detached, exquisite limbs squirm and gesture, defiling the carefully appointed and balanced domestic interiors, marked by incense burners, house plants and pottery.  

Born from these watercolors, Bogia’s sculptures, suggest furniture and decor in both scale and surface.  Lacquer finishes, walnut veneer, grass cloth wallpaper, and folksy hand-laid yarn mixed with ornamental objects, conjure an abstraction of a specifically urbane kind of domestic interior.  The modern comfort and beauty expressed in these works is precarious: the sculptures are precisely designed to be held together by only balance and tension, suggesting that even private personal utopias are fragile and easily disrupted. 

Chris Bogia received his MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT and his BA from New York University, NY. Bogia was a recent recipient of the Jackson Pollock - Lee Krasner Foundation Grant, a Queens Council for the Arts, New Works Grant, as well as a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Artist Community Engagement Grant. He also was an artist in residence at the Queens Museum Studio Program between 2017-2018. Recent exhibitions include Grizzly Grizzly, Philadelphia, PA; The Bureau of General Services: Queer Division, Bravin Lee, Kate Werble, Spring/Break, New York; Mrs., Queens and Ortega y Gasset, Brooklyn, NY and is currently included in, MOTHA’s 99 Objects with Chris Vargas at the New Museum, New York, NY. Bogia is also the co-founder and director of Fire Island Artist Residency, the world’s first LGBTQ artist residency. This will be the artist’s first solo presentation with Mrs.