Biography

Chris Langdon (born 1952) is an American artist based in Los Angeles who produced a large body of work in many media, including painting, sculpture, graphics, assemblage, photography, film, and video. While attending California Institute of the Arts from 1971-76 in the Film (BFA) and Art (MFA) schools, Chris was extremely prolific, in particular producing about forty 16mm and 35mm films, in addition to assisting artists Robert Nelson, John Baldessari, and Jack Goldstein in the production of some of their films. Chris's film work was influenced by, but also satirized tendencies in the Los Angeles art world toward conceptual and structural work. Most of her film work makes extensive use of lively and unexpected humor and employs the tropes of so-called "low" culture, including corny references and pulp media, to make biting critiques and comments on (and devilish subversions of) the ways in which we ingest images, and what our minds then do with them. For instance, the film Bondage Boy (1973) uses an absurd and unlikely bondage setup as a satire on structuralism, while a phony post-mortem documentary on Picasso (Picasso (1973)) allows us to question the authority of images. This is the Brain of Otis Crawfield (1973) could be seen as a damning statement on both the Anglo co-opting of African-American culture and humanity, as well as a send-up of superficial "emotional" pieces that use clichéd cinematic tricks to manipulate audience reaction. Another film, Love Hospital Trailer (ca.1975) presents a series of goofy romantic and pseudo-professional interludes among its all-male cast in the guise of a soap opera TV spot. Chris ended a long initial string of filmmaking in about 1976, and retired from making art in 1994. In 2008, she resumed painting.