A Workshop of Suspended Motion

Banner image: "Chris Larson (50) Untitled." 
I kept waiting for multimedia artist Chris Larson's sculptures to do something. At the Hair + Nails Gallery in Minneapolis, catapult-like arms are poised mid-fling. A segmented wooden spine curls as if ready to unfurl. Rocking bases, seesaws, clamps. All the wooden sculptures urge a body’s weight, a push forward, a return. 

Larson’s work is rooted in what he calls “fluid architecture,” a concept that manifests in the gallery as a collection of makeshift tools and machinery. The exhibition unfolds across three separate rooms, and the works sit on rough plywood tables, arranged like prototypes or relics awaiting demonstration. Some look medieval, resembling siege engines and sawmills. Others feel almost futuristic in their innovation, like speculative tools from a world that hasn’t quite industrialized. Everything is wood—charred, stained, sanded smooth in places, raw in others.  

Chris Larson (19) Untitled

It’s clear that Larson is interested in literal ranges of motion. Many of the pieces are built around a simple question: What can wood do if you push it just past what it’s meant to do? A rocker stretches into an exaggerated waist-high crescent, a ladder-like structure bending inward like an accordion. A central contraption of pulleys and suspended discs suggests something should be milled, pressed, or lowered. I wanted to touch them, to rock them forward, to feel their weight shift. Instead, I am left with the suggestion of labor: Tools without a task, machines without workers, architecture without walls. The refusal feels deliberate as the sculptures reject a sleek, industrial finish in favor of visible construction—pegs protrude, edges are charred, joints remain exposed. 

Larson’s work consistently circles the relationship between body, machine, and labor. In his previous film “Stillness of Labor," he replicated an abandoned garment factory to study the “imprint humans leave behind in space of heavy repetition.” In a city like Minneapolis, where old mills and warehouses still mark the landscape, the connection feels particularly resonant. Larson’s wooden sculptures echo that industrial lineage, but they are stripped of productivity.  

It was then that I realized these pieces aren’t fully meant to function; they’re choreographies of potential. They stage the relationship between body and tool without allowing the transaction to complete. In a world obsessed with optimization and output, there is something radical about a machine that refuses to produce anything but a thought.  

Chris Larson (16) Untitled

Standing in the gallery, I became hyperaware of my own body in contrast—how I moved around the tables, how I leaned in to study a hinge, how I stepped back to trace the full arc of a curve. I left the gallery respecting the sculptures' insistence, its commitment to slowness, its belief that the everyday—hinges, rockers, beams—can still carry the weight of history. That even in stillness, there’s motion stored somewhere inside the grain. ◼︎ 

Chris Larson Sculpture 2025–2026 will be on view at the Hair+Nails Gallery in Minneapolis through April 5, 2026. See more of his work on his website.