This work explores how the practice of collecting can shape the creation of domestic spaces. From the most lavish to the most impoverished of circumstances, the spaces that humans inhabit take form through the amassing of objects. Beyond the functional value of these objects, collecting might serve a variety of unconscious purposes, such as: exhibiting a material archive of wealth; documenting travel and performing worldliness; creating a narrative of personal achievement; or attempting to craft an aesthetic sensibility ultimately tied to norms of gender, class, racial, religious or national identity.

This work also alludes to the colonial heritage of collecting through the inclusion of “ethnic” masks on the walls of the imaginary figure's space. While this work creates multiple meanings and readings, it ultimately creates a dreamspace that might appear as the nightmare of our historical present—or a vision of a world that hovers just beyond the threshold of perception.

Chris Fallon is known for his striking images of ambiguous figures that both draw on and challenge existing traditions of portraiture. The artist's work challenges American notions of masculinity and femininity as perpetuated by Old Hollywood, advertising and other forms of media. His non-binary figures hover in a liminal zone beyond the gendered archetypes that have shaped the history of American domesticity. The artist considers his work somewhere in-between formal portraiture and satirical cartoons, with the tension between so-called highbrow and lowbrow art forms a foundation of his practice.