Chris Wolston: Profile in Ecstasy, a major exhibition of work by American artist and designer Chris Wolston, organized by guest curator Glenn Adamson. Based between New York and Medellín, Colombia, Wolston is recognized for his vibrant and conceptually rigorous practice, which spans furniture, lighting, installation, and sculpture. His work blends traditional techniques and materials with a wry, contemporary realism, resulting in a wholly original postmodern aesthetic infused with material fluency and environmental urgency.
Wolston’s interest in non-Western art-making traditions began at the Kokrobitey Institute in Accra, Ghana, and continued through his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he earned his BFA in 2009. In 2010, he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study pre-Columbian ceramics in Colombia, a formative experience that led him to open a second studio in Medellín. There, he continues to collaborate with local artisans alongside his husband, filmmaker David Sierra.
Ecstasy, as curator Glenn Adamson observes, is a peculiar and provocative word—referring at once to a drug, to transcendent religious experience, and, etymologically, to being “out of oneself.” It is an unexpected but fitting lens through which to view Wolston’s work, which expands design beyond the physical into the imaginative, expressive, and even ecstatic. Installed at Dallas Contemporary across four catwalks reminiscent of a fashion show or drag ball, Wolston’s pieces are accompanied by Sierra’s video works, which provide a pulsing soundtrack of movement and light. At the center of the exhibition stands a radiant portrait of pop icon Grace Jones, envisioned as an illuminated fountain rippling with water.
Wolston makes design perform in unique ways, transforming function into fantasy, utility into expression. The body is a recurring motif in his work, as are the natural surroundings of Colombia. His practice is materially diverse: woven rattan furniture that reimagines figural sculpture while sustaining artisan economies; monumental terracotta forms carved from blocks of clay and fired to an earthy permanence; lightweight aluminum pieces cast from foam and anodized in reflective, iridescent hues; bronze furniture treated with rainbow patinas, the surface animated by torch flame like a painter’s brush; and handwoven carpets produced at an atelier in Marrakech, based on warped calla lily motifs interpreted freely by individual weavers, each rug alive with improvisation and energy.
In Profile in Ecstasy, these elements coalesce into a richly layered environment where design becomes a vehicle for imagination, queer desire, and material transformation. The exhibition revels in the wild, seductive force of nature and the body, drawing equally on Art Nouveau, pre-Columbian symbolism, and architectural excess.
As a non-collecting institution dedicated to presenting the most compelling art of our time, Dallas Contemporary provides the ideal platform for Wolston’s experimental practice. His work aligns seamlessly with the museum’s mission to engage audiences with interdisciplinary art that challenges conventions and invites new ways of seeing. In this spirit, the exhibition transforms the galleries into a space of wonder and confrontation, where beauty, history, and design collide.
