Featuring: Chris Coffin

Chris Coffin is a Brooklyn-based artist who works in photography, video, installation, performance, and drawing. Being raised by the ocean, yet living in the city, the work is informed by his background as a lifeguard, swimmer and surfer. Coffin's direct physical encounters with both urban and ocean environments provides the work with varying perspectives of their differences and similarities.

Water Drawing (installation), Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, 2008

dimensions variable

For his Water Drawing project, Coffin drew on the resources of the fishing community to construct a ‘water sculpture’. Existing of rope tying together 100 lobster pot buoys, Coffin fashioned a floating strand measuring over 300 feet long and swam a quarter mile out into the ocean with his water sculpture in tow. For the swimmer, the 45 minute performance was a test of strength, endurance, improvisation, and interaction, but for the viewer, the floating sculpture yielded a dynamic series of drawings on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Coffin is currently showing in My Long Island, on view until September 6 at the Islip Museum, and was recently reviewed by the New York Times.

Water Drawing, 13 min DVD, Newport, Rhode Island, 2001
100 lobster buoys, nylon rope, swimmer, currents, wind, waves, dimensions variable

Buoy Portraits, 2001-present

digital c-print, face mounted to plexiglass, 8" x 10"

Hanna, Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, 2008
marker on wall, dimensions variable

Islands and Coastlines (Nantucket), 2009

graphite on paper, 8.5" x 11"

Home (Grow), 2008

digital c-print, face mounted to plexiglass, 15" x 60"

Home (Industrial Organic Grid), 2008
digital c-print, face mounted to plexiglass, 15" x 60"

Hurricanes, 2003

graphite on library card, 3" x 5"