Newman Popiashvili Gallery is pleased to present In Little Place a Million, the first solo exhibition at the gallery of Brooklyn-based artist Chris Fennell. The title of the show is a quote from the prologue of William Shakespeare’s Henry V, in which the Chorus begs the indulgence of the audience that they might allow the small domain of the stage to metaphorically stand in for greater ideas and events. The power of abstraction is specifically called upon to conjure passion and the scope of history with the humble means at hand.

Chris Fennell creates mixed media collages whose organic and geometric patterns reference nature, mathematics, architecture, and religious art. Fennell’s medium is paper, cut in differently sized circles, lines, and rectangles that overlap in multiple layers. The drawings are created and meant to be viewed in close proximity. When the artist conceives them, he already has a sense of how three or four or five layers will interact on the surface, but admits that they are hard to visualize in their entirety due to the distortions created by the intersecting layers. Processes are set in motion, unforeseen things occur and something new is created, and to quote the artist: If he is not surprised at some point, something is probably wrong.

The drawings are labor–intensive, they take place both in space and over time. Unlike plane geometry, where a dot represents a precise location in space, Fennell sees these dots as measuring a moment’s passing. Unlike the mathematical point, Fennell’s dots do not define a precise place, but ironically achieve exactly the opposite effect, eliding and eluding boundaries, due to the visual effects of their great abundance.

Chris Fennell was recently in a two-person exhibition at PS122, titled Here and There, and has been featured in group shows at Carol Jazzar Contemporary Art in Miami, FL, and at Alpan Gallery in Huntington, NY.