Chris Kraus (b.1957, New York)
Frank Sargeson
Digital photographs 2011

Describing exactly what Chris Kraus is as difficult as describing the complexities of a group of individuals. Kraus is an author and film-maker.
Acting and performance played critical roles in her development as an author and art writer who speaks with authority about the state of exhibiting art, the shrunken role of art as an object and the use of narrative to stand back and tell another narrative. Fascinating, brilliant and visceral in her ability to combine personal anecdotal writing which some how merge into a story, yet successfully managing to avert the reader’s attention away from her.
Kraus’s I Love Dick was written in 1997, still has a cult following today. Among some of her seminal publications are Aliens and Anorexia (2000), Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotext(e) Reader (2001) Video Green : Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness (2004), Torpor (2006) and her most recent Where Art Belongs (2011).

Kraus was born in New York, but spent most of her childhood and early tertiary years in New Zealand. These images of the great bohemian New Zealand writer, Frank Sargeson by Kraus belie a certain affinity , a kinship that she found in his work while she was growing up. In this sense, these images, while they a visual memories of Sargeson's study,  there is a certain amount of the auto-biographical for Kraus as well.

These images are subject to copyright and may not be reproduced under any circumstance without express permission from the artist. © Chris Kraus 2011