Chris Schanck's work embodies the Anselm Kiefer quote "Ruins, for me, are the beginning." He combines assemblage with hand crafted and hand built, industrial with unique, elegance with farce. That combination results in works that are strange and otherworldly and at the same time nostalgic, like monuments to a lost civilization, or remnants of a future we will never inhabit. This inherent aesthetic of contradiction between dilapidation and preciousness, romanticism and cynicism, is endlessly relevant for our times. Schanck received a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in Sculpture and an M.F.A in Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art. In addition to making his own work, he founded a studio in Detroit where he works with over a dozen artists, students and craftspeople, showing his belief in the spirit and importance of not just pushing his own work out in the world, but fostering a creative community.
