Chris Watts (born 1984, in High Point, North Carolina) is an American artist whose interdisciplinary practice explores social and personal narrative, abstraction, embodiment, and the unstable boundary between the visible and the immaterial. Working across painting, installation, drawing, video, and mixed media, Watts examines perception, disappearance, and sacred or meditative space through layered surfaces, translucent materials, and spatial compositions that function like windows into overlapping psychic and symbolic worlds.
Watts attended the MFA program at Yale School of Art, after graduating from the College of Arts and Architecture, University of North Carolina, and the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Wroclaw, Poland. Watts has held various artist residencies, among them the Giancarlo DiTrapano Foundation for the Literature and the Arts, Sezze Romano, Italy; Marek Maria Pienkowski Foundation, Chelm, PL; McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Charlotte, NC; the Art & Law Fellowship Program at Cornell University Art Architecture Planning, New York, NY; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, New York, NY; and the 2022-2023 Soros Justice Fellowship Program.
His work has been exhibited at Welancora Gallery in Brooklyn, NY; Galerie Lelong & Co. in New York, NY; Bode Projects in Berlin, DE; Monica King Contemporary in New York, NY; Artspace Visual Art Center in Raleigh, NC; Galleria Pienkow in Lipinki, Poland; Knockdown Center in New York, NY; and McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC, among others. Watts was recently selected for the Fountainhead Arts Residency in Miami, which will begin January 6, 2027.
His work is in the collection of the Mint Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Davidson College, and the Jimenez-Colon Collection. Watts' work has been featured in The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, ARTNews, and Brooklyn Magazine. He is a featured artist in the documentary film The Art of Making It, directed by Kelcey Edwards and produced by Emmy-nominated producer Debi Wisch (The Price of Everything). Watts shares his time between New York and North Carolina.
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