Before arriving in New York—where he is now installed, like an unclaimed parcel that has somehow passed through multiple customs offices—Amir Chasson (b. 1968) spent a decade in London, diligently refining his artistic faculties while absorbing, with characteristic stoicism, the city’s relentless damp. No sooner had he dried off than he relocated to Berlin, where he applied himself with equal vigour to art-making and nocturnal revelry. Now in New York, he continues to pursue his enigmatic mission, one that involves, in equal measure, delighting, perplexing, and—one assumes—sustaining himself in a city uniquely adept at ignoring artistic ambition.

Armed with an MFA from Goldsmiths, London (2010), and an MA in Design from Middlesex University (2007), Chasson moves fluently between painting, drawing, and digital media, preoccupied as he is with the grand themes of identity, transformation, and the peculiar indignities of modern existence. His efforts have been acknowledged in respectable quarters: Bloomberg New Contemporaries saw fit to include him twice (2009, 2010), and in 2012 he received the Abbey Fellowship at the British School at Rome, an honour that permitted him to contemplate the weight of history from a safe and institutionally sanctioned distance.

His work has been exhibited in various locations—some of them prestigious, others merely geographically diverse—including the Saatchi Gallery, ICA London, Leeds, Paris, Berlin, Beijing and Bratislava. More recent appearances include Heterotopia at the Biennale de l’Image Tangible in Paris (2023) and From Analog to Digital and Back Again at Hinterconti in Hamburg (2024), the titles themselves hinting at the simultaneously philosophical and deeply pragmatic task of maintaining an artistic practice in the digital age. His work resides in collections both public and private, no doubt admired in hushed tones by collectors who believe themselves to be in possession of something significant, even if they cannot quite articulate why.

Chasson’s practice unfolds at the juncture where critique meets play, where abstraction brushes up against the representational, and where clarity, as if doubting itself, retreats into obfuscation. His background in design imparts a certain formal sharpness to the work, a sense of deliberateness that is, at times, knowingly betrayed by intuition, which enters not as an error but as a kind of deeper fidelity. It was during a springtime residency in a beautiful village in Quebec, Canada—a place whose quiet seemed to listen back—that he began carving wood. This new practice, which has since persisted with a sort of stubborn serenity, might be seen as a natural extension of his visual inquiries, or perhaps as something more elusive: a slow, almost meditative resistance to the tyranny of function, a refusal to make objects that serve.

As though the visual were merely one dialect of a larger language, Chasson has also turned to poetry, publishing in Germany and Slovakia—places where, one imagines, the act of writing still retains a certain sanctity, where readers sit alone in cafés, absorbing lines that ask more than they answer, where people still believe in the tragic glamour of suffering for art. Despite being well regarded in Europe, he has yet to secure a solo exhibition in the United States, a fact that must surely be corrected soon, assuming, of course, that the right people can be made to care. In the meantime, Chasson remains undeterred, his career unfolding with the quiet inevitability of an artist who is either destined for greatness or simply too stubborn to stop.

What matters to him most—though he might not always admit it, except perhaps in moments of rare candour—is having a space that allows for focus, experimentation, and the freedom to engage deeply with his materials. In other words, somewhere to be left alone.

Materials and Methods
Chasson’s practice, if it may be called that without lending it undue gravitas, revolves around collage—a word that now functions less as a descriptor than as a kind of diplomatic immunity for aesthetic inconsistency. It is both a method and a metaphor, the latter being especially useful when the work refuses to behave. Into this elastic framework he introduces acrylic paint (brash, insistent), carved lime wood (slightly tragic in its earnestness), found images (read: things other people threw away), digital manipulation (to remind us that time is indeed progressing), and linocut printing, a medium that insists on being both laborious and quaint.

The paintings are, on first encounter, rather bright. Their fluorescent surfaces seem to promise something cheerful, before quietly defaulting to more familiar themes—grief, violence, historical grievance—tucked beneath layers of colour like bad news in a festive envelope. The sculptures, meanwhile, are more forthright in their refusal to behave. Religious motifs are queered (as if religion had not already queered itself sufficiently), myths are dismantled and reassembled with an artisan’s patience and a provocateur’s glee, and gender binaries—those old museum pieces—are rearranged until they resemble something more like furniture.

The woodcarving is done by hand, using tools—chisels, mallets, gouges—that seem to carry with them a vague promise of authenticity, or at least of blisters. Once shaped, the wood is often painted in what could generously be described as “uncontrolled” colours. This tension—between elegance and collapse, refinement and tantrum—is neither incidental nor entirely strategic. In Guns (2025), for instance, a taut, minimal form is all but drowned by paint applied with a freedom that borders on negligence.

Scale and Dimensions
The works are typically mid-scale—large enough to insist on their significance, but not so large as to cause logistical difficulty or existential dread. A brief catalogue for the spatially curious:

Paintings:

• Dragons (2025): Three panels, 180 × 80 cm each (~71 × 31.5 inches)
• Trees (2024): Two panels, 120 × 80 cm each (~47 × 31.5 inches)
  

Sculptures:

• Guns (2025): Approx. 100 × 40 × 45 cm (~39 × 16 × 18 inches)
• Other wood sculptures: Ranging from 12 to 56 cm in height (~5 to 22 inches)

Cutouts:

• 12.5 × 6 cm each (~5 × 2.4 inches), sometimes in a 30 × 40 cm frame (~11.8 × 15.7 inches).
  

Linocut Prints:

• Approx. 120 × 80 cm each (~47 × 31.5 inches) in 2-4 plates in various combinations
  

Space Requirements
Chasson’s work does not ask for space so much as it assumes it, much like a houseguest who unpacks before being invited. Both wall and floor are required—ideally in generous proportion—as the works often insist on speaking to one another, and do so more convincingly when not crammed. The studio must also tolerate a fair degree of mess: linseed oil spills, digital debris, carved shavings that suggest something is being made, even when it isn’t.

A sturdy workbench is non-negotiable (sculpture may be conceptual, but chisels are not), and ample room must be left for pacing, reappraisal, and the discreet abandonment of false starts. While he has shown an admirable, even masochistic, ability to produce under substandard conditions, what Chasson requires in reality is a space large enough to contain both the work and the doubts it generates. In short, this is a practice that thrives on contradiction: materially rich, conceptually dense, and logistically demanding, it seeks a studio that will allow for solitude, disruption, and the occasional small miracle.

Amir’s work has appeared in group exhibitions alongside that of Erwin Wurm, Ed Atkins, Adam Chodzko, Paula Rego, Fiona Banner, Polly Apfelbaum, Phyllida Barlow, Alice Channer, Michael Craig-Martin, Angela de la Cruz, Enrico David, Tacita Dean, George Shaw, Laure Prouvost, Richard Long, Goshka Macuga, Rose Wylie, Mark Wallinger, Cornelia Parker, Eddie Peake, Sean Scully, Charlie Billingham, Bob and Roberta Smith, Nicolas Deshayes, Peles Empire and Cyriak—a list that reads rather like the contents page of a catalogue designed to reassure funding bodies that all the correct names have been included. His work, too, has found its way into collections both public and private, in the UK and elsewhere—though where exactly, and under what lighting conditions, is anyone’s guess.