Horton, Kristan

Canadian, b. 1970

BiographyKristan Horton’s multi-disciplinary practice includes sculpture, drawing, photography, and video. In his Orbits series (2009) he snaps photographs with a digital camera as he circumnavigates objects in his studio—a doorknob or a pile of papers, for example. He then digitally fuses the images together to achieve a multi-layered composite image that combines many different perspectives in a single composition. Reminiscent of Cubist artworks in which objects are broken up and depicted from a multitude of viewpoints, Horton’s Orbits use reproduction and repetition to push simple, representational photographs into the territory of abstraction.

Kristan Horton studied fine art at the University of Guelph and the Ontario College of Art and Design. He has shown his work widely in Canada and abroad, and has had solo exhibitions at White Columns, New York, and The Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, among others. Horton’s work has been featured recently in the following group exhibitions: Beautiful Fictions, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; My Evil Twin, MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina; Toy Void, Münchner Kammerspiele, Munich; Stutter and Twitch, Bard College Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; Beyond/In Western New York, The Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, and We can Do This Now, The Power Plant, Toronto. Horton was the winner of the 2010 Grange Prize for Contemporary Photography.