Christopher Mir (RHM Foundation Grantee, ’03) talks to executive director Quang Bao about alienation, heaven and the painting he’d rescue in a fire. Summer 2010.

Bao: What did you do today painting-wise if anything?

Mir: I have been working on a new painting. There are a couple women in the foreground, a picture of my son, a gorgeous landscape, corporate headquarters, a white wolf, etc.

Bao: All on one canvas?

Mir: I like to pack it in! More is more if you ask me. There's something really compelling to me about overloading the painting with disparate elements.

Bao: You use personal photos instead of sourcing images from afar. What made you switch over to taking your own photographs?

Mir: Well, to be clear, it's very much a combination of found images and my own shots. I like the differences between pirated material and home-grown captures. I think initially I wanted to have more control over the positions of figures—to get the right faux ritual quality.

Bao: It's not just fatherhood and wanting to use your children who seem at the ready like Lewis Carroll?

Mir: That's part of it! I do adore my kids, and they (so far) are happy to play along with my make-believe situations. And oddly enough it feels like a strange kind of self portraiture when I'm painting my son in particular. When I am painting my daughter I always think of Persephone.

Bao: But turning away and obscured faces—that's the adult posture. Maybe you wouldn't pose your son that way?

Bao: Right. Luc Tuymans said turning away from someone is a negation. A very dramatic statement. I think the obscured faces are interesting because it gives the image a spontaneous look. And, of course, there are many possible psychological interpretations.

Bao: You mean like turning away from the camera? Tell me two interpretations.

Mir: Well, the most obvious thing that comes to mind would be that you are involved in your own world, and that you are less interested in making contact with the outside world. Another possibility is that there is some kind of withdrawing or moving away from the camera. Honestly, I just like playing with these various potential meanings without holding onto a fixed view of it.

Bao: Did you read sci-fi growing up?

Mir: I did. I loved comic books as a kid, and later I read Gurdieff's Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. I also really love Philip Pullman.

Bao: It’s evident. Your preoccupations now seem more interior or at least concerned more about the human condition. The people in your paintings don't really connect.

Mir: I think you're right. It's as if the painting were a projection of the psyche. There's actually a good interaction of figures in the one I'm working on now, but I love paintings like El Greco's “Laocoon,” where the figures are all on their own in the same drama.

Bao: You have a happy disposition. Your wife paints. Your children love adventure. There’s a playful connect the dots on the canvas. How did you come to such a viewpoint?

Mir: I think it's fundamental. I wouldn't say that in general I feel the existential angst of real alienation, and you're right—I am really blessed—but there is no question that deep down there is a sense that each of us is a separate little universe, that ultimately we need to come to terms with our inner life in order to integrate or be more empathic/present/ grounded. Some people have suggested that my work is at least partly about being disembodied—that the digital age has contributed to this—I think it's the human condition, and that it's nothing new. The Buddha was working on this problem 2,500 years ago. The approach for me is to posit these things as they are—and also to offer possible solutions—or ways around the ungrounded state.

Bao: When I look at the paintings, I get confused about the 'tense' of them. They are of course surreal and future-minded, but I feel loss—and lost. I guess my question is two parts: What do you think about the Garden of Eden and in what way is memory at work in these paintings?

Mir: I love the stories in the Bible. The Garden of Eden is the state of perfection—where human beings are interconnected . . . part of nature, unashamed. And the expulsion from that state explains the alienation we were talking about earlier! I'm not sure what to say about memory. I do a lot of revising or interpreting past events of my life. And I want the paintings to feel like dreams, which always appear to be seen through a filter. The paintings should look like you are remembering the future.

Bao: But does memory function in your artistic process?

Mir: I don't think about it that much to be honest. In my mind the process is about constructing a viable world, with its own rules. It's a systemic view. I don't, for example, try to make a picture about a specific narrative usually.

Bao: I think people would be tempted to try to read a single narrative, but the thread doesn't hold. Your world is fecund.

Mir: Yes, it's a matter of disrupting the linear thread. Hopefully, it's about shining a light in the basement, looking around in the irrational corners, and resisting the temptation to put everything in a neat package.

Bao: Your paintings are about beginnings and possibilities. Do you ever think about the apocalypse? Or are they post-apoc?

Mir: I do. But I tend to put it off in the distance, and interpret it as a real potential disaster rather than the Biblical story. So, I would think more about the threats that face life on earth, like natural or human-made disasters—plagues, comets, climate change, etc. But again, I want to highlight a more hopeful humanistic vision if I can.

Bao: I find the works amusing. There's humor embedded in them like a mushroom growing or Queen Anne's Lace blooming. It doesn't read like a doomsday but it's never clear how these people got into these strange situations with helicopters and overgrown fields. Does God wear camouflage?

Mir: I love it! There’s definitely a funny side to it. The big questions should probably be answered by a cosmic joke. The works at the RHM Foundation now don't contain the more ominous elements, but they're there in other images for sure. I try to leave the project open to a big range of expression. It wouldn't feel right to only paint heaven—or to only paint hell.

Bao: You haven't painted 12 x 12 inches ever. Is this a literal fragmentation?

Mir: Yes, those small paintings are little pieces of larger works. I thought it would be interesting to zoom in. Next, I want to make a larger work that is also a detail.

Bao: It’s not just a function of less time now that you're a father?

Mir: Haha—that could be part of it! But my son is 8 years old, and my daughter is 5, so I should be used to it by now!

Bao: Mazel tov! Do you have an opinion on the contemporary art market? You're blessed to have Galeria Senda but you don't have New York representation. But clearly you're successful and showing work.

Mir: It was my choice to leave the gallery I was with—because I had been there for six years—I'd had three solo shows there. It felt like a good time to leave (on good terms) and hopefully move on to a better situation further up the food chain. I do have Senda, as well as other dealers in Europe and the US. My hope is to find a great gallery in NY soon. I think the last couple years have actually been great in terms of sales. A very surprising situation to be in. I've been approached by a bunch of galleries in New York- I'm just waiting for the right context.

(e-whispers gallery of his dreams) Bao: Are you religious?

Mir: No, I practice meditation every day, and take Buddhist meditation classes, but I'm not officially religious.

Bao: Does the Native American spiritually and psychoanalysis function as brain food?

Mir: Absolutely. I love belief systems. I like to work with these models, but I'm not attached to anything in a dogmatic way.

Bao: Let me see how to ask this…the worlds of your canvas feel genderless, maybe even sexless.

Mir: My great grandmother was a southern Baptist who married a Cherokee. That might explain a few things.

Bao: After 35, you can’t blame anybody else. So, despite the sometimes off-the-shoulder pose it's as if every person and thing in the paintings held equal weight. How about this? You are a well-read humanist but these are not humanist paintings. I can’t figure out how to say this to you.

Mir: I think trees are sexy.

Bao: The paintings possess a life force—if that's not too Star Wars.

Mir: Yes! There does appear to be some kind of chi or life energy or Holy Ghost vibe. So that is metaphysical, and mystical—and I'm perfectly happy with that interpretation. I'm interested in the genderless quality you asked about . . .

Bao: Maybe in dreams, we have no gender.

Mir: I think it's essentially an erotic universe on one level. Every living thing is working on pushing forward those genes.

Bao: Yes! Pushing genes but with a no-touch policy.

Bao: You are so funny. My work is PG 13- another casualty of being a father of small children!

Bao: Is there a hero? Is this a journey?

Mir: In the paintings, there are archetypes. The boy is the hero for sure. The women tend to be either sorceress figures or like Hestia and Persephone. Years ago, the men were all wanderers—mystics—or Jesus hippy drop outs. Now, they have heads made of flowers and rag weed.

Bao: That's funny. Do you record your dreams?

Mir: I do. And recently it's going in reverse—my paintings came into my dreams. I have a work in progress with a devil's tower in it—and the other night I dreamed that the devil's tower had replaced the mountain in my home town in Maine.

Bao: Is it tough to be married to another artist/painter [artist Karen Dow]?

Mir: It can be. Mostly, I'm just really inspired by Karen's work. And we have great arguments about minimalism vs. realism.

Bao: You sound destined for an Oscar.

Mir: Ha!

Bao: Final lightning round. Are you ready for The Absolutist Quiz?

Mir: Go.

Bao: Your house is on fire—which Mir painting are you grabbing?

Mir: You're insane.

Bao: A year's supply of Campbell's soup for trying. Next, you won the lottery today—which contemporary artwork are you putting your name on tomorrow?

Mir: I would want a Marcel Dzama drawing for sure.

Bao: You've reached the gates of heaven. It looks like nothing of what you've painted. Disappointed?

Mir: I'll probably be worried about all my sins at that point. A more honest answer: I’d be devastated!