We need Tanner’s work now. At this moment—now more than ever—we need to collectively embrace art as celebration; glamour as resistance; desire, allure and romance as defiance

—Karen Finley

Nefertiti

2020

Glitter, paillettes, jewels, beads, bullets, chains and mixed media on canvas

48 x 3 x 24 in.

Nefertiti (Detail)

Venus

2020

Glitter, paillettes, jewels, beads, fossils, mica, seashells and mixed media on canvas

48 x 3 x 72 in.

Venus (Detail)

Nina

2020

Glitter, paillettes, jewels, beads, fossils, amethyst, mica, geodes and mixed media on canvas

48 x 3 x 72 in.

Nina (Detail)

Dolly

Glitter, paillettes, jewels, beads and mixed media on canvas

48 x 3 x 24 in.

Dolly (Detail)

Judy

Glitter, paillettes, jewels, beads and mixed media on canvas

48 x 3 x 24 in.

Judy (Detail)

Cleopatra

Glitter, paillettes, jewels, beads and mixed media on canvas

48 x 3 x 24 in.

Cleopatra (Detail)

Joni

Glitter, paillettes, jewels, beads and mixed media on canvas

48 x 3 x 24 in.

Joni (Detail)

Paul Newman

Glitter, paillettes, jewels, beads, mica and mixed media on canvas

48 x 3 x 24 in.

Liz Taylor

Glitter, paillettes, jewels, beads, mica and mixed media on canvas

48 x 3 x 24 in.

Installation View

A Call to LOVE By Karen Finley

Glitter, glamour, melody, and voice.

Loyalty, adornment, lilac icing on cake

His last dollar, will gladly give to you

A tinsel tiger carries your weight

Made for you from heaven’s gate

It is art, my dear

We are here

Have a cup of tizzy tea

And wear your best frock

We are together

And that is reason enough

This is an artist not only with talent

but with generosity and genuine care

Troubadour musical delight

His art brings enchantment

To a world that takes and breaks

our love and soul

Yet Tanner’s art always has room for

a rainbow view, a phoenix flutter, a December rose.

This aesthetic commitment of his, as genuine impulse

Is his dedication to humanity, to witness against all ugly

To assist and refuse degradation but to pedestal

This prism, A Call to LOVE.

In particular, in this age of attack

Of oppression, crazy cruel xenophobia

Tanner reimagines a better vision of ourselves

A reliving, a surround-scape escape-scape of wonder

Of human potential against all things

Wicked monster

But to impress via his own rose-colored

Jeweled glasses to start with our own joy attitude

With celebratory defiance.

Every piece of Tanner’s is like a piece of birthday cake

Another year, another milestone

Blow and make a wish

In his paintings wishes do come true

As a two-year-old Tanner convalesced in a hospital, following surgery for the condition of a prematurely-closed soft spot in his skull. Panels were cut on the sides of his skull, allowing his brain room to grow. After surgery, he would be required to wear a football helmet for two years to protect his head. One cannot imagine the loneliness and suffering he went through. Despite this difficult beginning, Tanner never despaired or complained or became bitter. He had the care and daily visit of his mother Sally*, who traveled the 100-mile roundtrip to the hospital every day for a year and a half. Yet he transformed his waiting, the child-cruel bullying, the agony of his disfigurement into a triumphant claim of creativity, delight, and inner DIVA calling.

We need Tanner’s work now. At this moment, now more than ever, we need to collectively embrace art as celebration; glamour as resistance; desire, allure and romance as defiance. His appropriation of everything shimmery reminds us about the surface thrill-shrill shallowness of empty promises and things bling. But we can dance. Wear perfume to cover the stink. His extreme embellishments and décor-defused accoutrements expose the blur of grotesque quick-change artists. He is really saying what matters is the love within, rather than without. His artworks simultaneously occupy disenchantment while straddling against existentialism with temporary flash. Tanner refuses to retreat during times of deepest loss, the most desperate times for himself and our community. Yes…his art bliss has a vulnerability, a curious courageous inspiration, a swirl of saved ribbons and gift wrap. Just to be close to you.

Christopher Tanner is the best of friends and devoted citizen. He cares about his friends, his community, his partner Anthony Rocanello, his family, and other artists. And this caring is evident in his artmaking. By picking up small pieces—montaging mosaic elements and fragmented memory into compositions to steady our way—he is unapologetic in an opposition to deconstruction. He rather constructs and builds on the strength and materiality of assemblage and collage. His hands get dirty in the making. Body expression is present. This isn’t about the privilege of high-concept art reserved for a few in the know. His paintings are exercises in sensation.

His art speaks of a yearning, a longing, a word translatable only in Portuguese: saudade. This missingness is a nameless melancholia, a void always present in so many of our generation. For Tanner, who lost his partner Steve Lott in 1991 to AIDS, the journey of creating art during grief is particularly resonant. We have lost so many friends, yet his life and work rise out of these times. They are a testament of endurance— that we can and will be alive—a blessing of the mirrored beasts as reminders of ornamentation, on parade, as costume. Tanner’s work pays homage to the glory of being—a fete—and the decadence of chance encounter to thrive despite the odds.

And damn it, why not! Give us magnificence within a frame. Let us have perspective with your lavish, kaleidoscope treasure as deserved. Tanner straddles his generosity not in a linear trope but through borders of consumption, appetite, deliverance, and over-the-top-credo: a nouveau riche declaration of silly, ravishing jubilance. His paintings speak and question the authenticity of preciousness, royalty, and inherited and accumulated wealth. With the creative act, there is the beckoning or reckoning to even out the world of neglect, abandonment, and impoverishment. His work is a stained glass lens against the inhumanity of tragic circumstances, surviving with the memories of what remains. If I can’t see the world as it is, I can see how it can be.

Tanner’s abstraction process is a way to reorganize and clarify chaos in a directed, managed shattering. Literally—he picks up the pieces. His gemmed landscapes are body mappings: a closer-looking, glazing-gazing skin cell in microscopic technicolor. At times, he stops at rotundas of organs and lashes. These works are inside us: a galaxy of utopian senses of eyes, ears, taste, and aroma, saturated with a deep feeling of interiority. Don’t be fooled by the robust festive excitement. Tanner’s work has a mission: to command space and respect for the queer body and desire. We stand at attention.

Christopher Tanner’s art speaks to remembering, honoring, and celebrating life, love, and art. A dazzling occasion to behold…. Art as a call to LOVE.