Chris Newman: "SCRUPLES" at Gordon Pym

It is on one of those cold gray winter afternoons walking up rue d'Echaudé that I enter the Gordon Pym & Fils gallery. The heating of the small gallery, the decreased lighting, makes this stepping into home.  

Chris Newman is standing in a paint splattered green Bermuda short and white t-shirt, his graying hair tussled like a neural power plant, buzzing off ideas, with the back to us. Immediately I sense Chris Newman is a saint like those Russian icon painters; an artist, a composer, poet, performer, a philosopher.

Gottfried Tollmann, sitting at his cluttered table, introduces us. Chris Newman is sticking his drawings reminiscent of Cy Twombly on the paint-splattered wall with pins like an acupuncturist healing a wall of muscle pain.

He's been working all night, doing some paintings and drawings for the upcoming show at the Gordon Pym & Son gallery opening Saturday 11th December 2004 at 18 hours.

A saint like turn of his teddy-bear body opening up to me like a saint with his cheerful indistinguishable humanity.

A couple of canvases are stacked up and read: "I'm thin" - that's not what I am, says Chris. He's been working hard last night and the walls are splashed with paint. Gottfried wants to keep it that way. Chaos - inspiration.

Chris Newman autographs his scrapbook "GODDED" (for 'got-it', or God's conception?) with the word "JOY" - a magician. It's advised to read the text " in one swoop, In one ice-cream scoop". It gets to me; you read his words that are reminiscent of philosophical text, diary, in short -- Spinoza on the runway a little drunk and drugged, a spiritual text of becoming.

Chris Newman, without the drinking and without the drugs, is like someone rising out of the ashes of a culture of innocuous consent. "I make art in order do catch reality in a net", he says on page 23. I fall asleep. Exhausted from so much art. Joy is what you get from reading his text, and happy dreams.

Chris Newman is the fusion of human behavior, politically (in)correct, and genius. It is us, here, now, today.