Chris Mottalini

Chris Mottalini is a photographer from Buffalo, New York who is currently based in Brooklyn. Mottalini’s liminal subjects function as critiques of our post-industrial era, but also reveal the subtle shifts that have evolved over time between site and non-site. After You Left, They Took It Apart (Demolished Paul Rudolph Homes) from 2007 and 6 by Schindler (2010) are two photographic series from that document this cultural change most acutely.

Throughout a total of 85 images, Mottalini investigates the hollowed structures built by two star architects of the Modern era, Rudolph Schindler and Paul Rudolph. Normal signs of structural aging – such as cracked concrete, exterior water damage and cracked glass – characterize the aging process seen in Schindler’s The Schindler House (1922), The Elliot House (1930), The Fitzpatrick-Leland House (1936), The Buck House (1934), The Inglewood Spec House (1937), and The Van Dekker House (1940) – a photo series that was originally commissioned by Pin-Up magazine. Although three of these structures have been acquired by LACMA, Mottalini’s documentation of a vandalized interior, found within one of the private homes designed and constructed by Paul Rudolph, speak of a Modernism that continues to appear untarnished in architectural history books but, in reality, has seriously gone awry.

Marginal structures continue as a motif in a series titled The Mistake by the Lake (2007) wherein each photograph captures a small, wooden structure placed along a rural road in upstate New York. Utilized as warming shelters near school bus stops, these mini buildings are strictly utilitarian. A separate series titled The Rock of the Month Club (2011) captures the return of natural rocks into the exterior environment. Turned briefly into commodified objects by virtue of the artist’s one-year subscription, these stones appear slightly at odds within their native surroundings.

The Picker Art Gallery of Colgate University is currently hosting After You Left, a solo show for Mottalini, that will close on October 7, 2011. In 2010 the Julie Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University hosted a solo show of the same series. Mottalini’s photography has been covered in publications such as The Los Angeles Times, Interior Design and The New York Times T Magazine Blog. He is currently preparing for a group show that will appear at Fotolectania in Barcelona from November 2011 to January 2012. More recently, his work appeared in group exhibitions at the Kate Werble Gallery in Manhattan, the Contact Photo Festival in Toronto and the Julius Shulman Institute in Los Angeles. Mottalini is currently finishing a series that focuses on still lives about skyscrapers.