Chris Bramel
Chris Bramel, Untitled (Olympic Lake), 2012-13
Artist Statement
The artist or writer road trip is not a new idea but has always fascinated me. I wanted to imagine and realize my own investigation of such a journey. In this journey I have become the tool of investigation. I must be the one to experience things to assess them for myself firsthand.
It was Marcel Duchamp who said, "I don't believe in art. I believe in artists." I say I make "art" about these places. Really, I am just an artist experiencing these places at any given point in time, yet it is and always will be a very specific point in time that will never exist again.
Chris Bramel is a recent graduate of Texas Christian University, in Fort Worth, Texas, where he recently earned his Bachelors of Fine Arts, with a concentration in photography. At just 23 years old, Chris has recently completed a 24,000 mile trek across the the United States and Canada, visiting 33 states, over a dozen national parks, and driving "more backwoods highways than you could shake a stick at," all in an effort to find new perspectives as an artist. Through this journey, the artist arrived home with thousands of images that would be intertwined and formatted into panoramas and six-sided, 360 degree panoramic photographs. The hexagon, an object of fascination for the artist, has provided a plane for him to surround a central subject image with the entire landscape at it was presented during the artists initial encounter.