I stumbled across the dioramas of Chris Kuksi while writing Upon the Shadow of Nothing. The influence they had on the resulting story is plain to see. I don't pretend to be knowledgeable about art, but this sort of hyper detailed, convoluted, otherworldly, macabre style couldn't possibly fail to snag my eyeballs.
Born in Springfield Missouri, Mr. Kuksi had a rural upbringing in a community populated mostly with blue collar workers. Perhaps his artistic imaginings grew out of a desire for escape from this banality, as well as from his alcoholic stepfather. Since his debut as an artist he's won numerous awards and been featured in over 100 exhibitions.
What is it about his work which so effortlessly captivates? I confess I am a detail hound. My mind is overly thorough, I am helpless but to exhaustively overthink everything and that mindset lends itself to appreciation of densely packed detail. My own sketches reflect this. I could spend hours studying every fine little facet, bit and bob on a Chris Kuksi sculpture, each of them seemingly a tiny universe unto itself with its own ongoing battle between good and evil.
What draws me in is the impression these pieces give that they are lived in, miniature societies with buildings, people, animals and so on. Each little figure seems to have some business it's attending to or somewhere it's going, all of them watched over by a dispassionate god-like being, vastly larger than the tiny creatures beneath it.
The recurring theme which defines my taste in artwork is an appreciation for internal consistency. The art I like usually depicts some other world which has its own native logic, its own distinct architecture and creatures, its own physical laws independent from those of our world. This consistency triggers some part of our brain into thinking it must be more than a fabrication. The brain is a pattern recognition engine above all else, after all.
As you might imagine, the amount of time that goes into one of these is staggering. A ship in a bottle times a trillion. It must feel, once a piece is finally completed, that an entire lifetime has ended and that a new one begins as the next piece begins to take shape. How intimately he must get to know every little part of it during assembly!
What unexpected forms art can take. What marvelous expressions of human imagination hide within the skulls of outwardly ordinary looking people. It is doubtful if anyone who met Chris, not knowing about his body of work, would even begin to guess that visions such as these dwell within his mind...some having already escaped through his hands.