Chris Corales' collages bring together old record sleeves, discarded packaging materials, book covers, and book binding cloth that look at once antique and modern. Corales' work evokes Constructivist painting by way of found paper collage, selecting his paper based on color and texture and eschewing materials with text and imagery. Corales participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in San Francisco, CA at venues including Gregory Lind Gallery, Luggage Store Gallery, Adobe Books, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, and New Langton Arts. He showed nationally with Fleisher/Ollman, Philadelphia, PA; Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR; Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York, NY; Samson Projects, Boston, MA; and the International Collage Center, Milton, PA. His work has been featured in international exhibitions at Pierogi Gallery, Leipzig, Germany and Galeria Zé dos Bois, Lisbon, Portugal. Corales lived and worked in Toronto, Canada.
Becky Huff Hunter on Chris Corales’s A Passer-By in His Own Moment on Artforum.com
*update: to contribute toward Chris's family's present and future expenses, visit www.gofundme.com/chris-corales
It is with great sadness that we share the passing of Chris Corales, an artist first introduced to Fleisher/Ollman by Chris Johanson in the 2011 summer show he curated for the gallery, entitled Introspective/Retrospective. At the opening reception of this exhibition Corales met, and fell in love with, then Philadelphia Museum of Art curator Adelina Vlas, and relocated to Philadelphia from Portland, Oregon soon after. The couple married and moved to Toronto a few years later, where Adelina took a curatorial position at the Art Gallery of Ontario. In 2015, they had a son, Nikola (Niko).
Chris was a good-humored character whose keen wit could light up a room. His signature constructions comprised of antique paper, old book covers, and binding tape imbued a minimal austerity with human warmth. While Chris lived in Philadelphia only a few short years, he made many friends in the art community here, and will be greatly missed. Our deepest sympathies go out to Adelina and Niko, and to all of Chris’ family and friends during this difficult time. A memorial for Chris will take place in Philadelphia this summer.
