Chris Wright Evans is an artist who finds metaphors for the human condition in the familiar backdrops of our lives. From project to project his deadpan photographs are strung together along common narratives that help connect the deliberate and sometimes disparate imagery.
Country Mile is a project that takes place along desolate stretches of highway, the outskirts of tourist destinations and roadside attractions. The title, Country Mile, is a colloquialism that means a long way; a unit of measurement used by a traveler unable to gauge their progress because of their inability to understand where they have come from, and unable to see where they are headed.
The places visited in the Country Mile range from grassy roadside mediums to tourist haunts that sell coffee mugs of the founding fathers an arms length away from a salted pretzel and a cheese coney. These destinations are, in their own way, mile markers of a misunderstood and incomplete picture of America’s cultural heritage.
Throughout the project the mile markers tick by, telling an interrelated systems of commerce, tradition, interaction and isolation. In 2020, Chris Wright Evans graduated from the University of North Texas with his MFA in photography. Evans was a Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas finalist in 2018, and 2019. In 2020 Chris was selected to participate in the Fort Worth Modern’s MODERN BILLINGS public art program.
In the fall of 2020, Chris took part in a how-to film series funded by a micro commission from the Art Galleries at TCU, with Melissa Gamez-Herrera, and Chris Wicker and David Blandy. In 2021, Evans received funding to help seek publication for his project his project Country Mile, and is currently preparing for an exhibition of the project later this year.
Chris currently lives and works in New York City
