Christopher "Chris" Wilder, a renowned and influential artist, surfer and teacher, known for his humor, charisma, courage, adventuresome spirit, unsurpassed knowledge of, and rarified opinions about art, music, waves, UFOs and countless other subjects, died December 20, 2024 in Los Angeles from complications following heart surgery. He was 67 years old.
Born on September 22, 1957, in Long Beach, California, Chris was the son of Georgia, an accomplished dancer, homemaker, and stained-glass artist, and Phillip Wilder, a Los Angeles County Firefighter, inveterate tinkerer and storyteller. The family lived in Huntington Beach, blocks from the ocean, where Chris began surfing at age eleven. The Wilders were an adventurous family, often embarking in their trusty VW van to surfing and snorkeling destinations in remote areas of Baja California, a pursuit Chris embraced and expanded upon throughout his life, traveling extensively through Mexico, Hawaii, Australia, and elsewhere to surf, explore and create. He was especially influenced by Lorne and Lawrence Blair’s epic BBC documentary series “Ring of Fire: An Indonesian Odyssey” that lured him across Java, Bali, Sumba, Timor and Rote Island several times and where he formed many lasting friendships.
While his silly sense of humor and play is legendary, it is Chris’ insatiable and inspiring curiosity that stands out for most who encountered him. School was all but impossible for a kid struggling with severe dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADHD in the 1960s and 70s, so he developed an interest in alternative media that was broad but discerning, including an early fascination with MAD magazine and Rick Griffin's illustrations in Surfer magazine, relatively obscure film music such as Ennio Morricone's Good, Bad, and the Ugly and Lee Marvin’s rendition of “Wandering Star” from the film“Paint Your Wagon,” surf photography and videography, and reruns of the Ernie Kovacs Show. Discovering the Documenta 5 and 7 catalogs, which featured the work of conceptual artist Michael Asher, among others, awoke his curiosity around contemporary art.
He enrolled at Orange Coast College and attended innovative experimental video and painting classes. Encouraged by OCC's outstanding faculty, Chris applied to the San Francisco Art Institute and was accepted with a full scholarship. At SFAI, he was especially inspired by video artist Doug Hall. Chris later enrolled at Cal Arts to study with Michael Asher and Douglas Huebler and became a student, friend and occasional collaborator of Mike Kelley. Chris' irreverent nature turned him away from what he viewed as old-hat conceptual art and instead, in the words of his sister and fellow CalArts student Holly Wilder, made "paintings of volcanos, corrals, and lima beans and occasionally lima beans corralled under a volcano."
Soon after graduation, Chris gained notice by showing at the influential if unorthodox Dennis Anderson Gallery and went on to have many solo exhibitions, including at the Kim Light and Blum & Poe galleries in Los Angles, Petersburg Gallery in New York, and across Europe, including at Tanja Grunert & Michael Janssen, Cologne, and Kapinos Gallery Berlin. New York Times critic Roberta Smith wrote with insight, "Mr. Wilder works with an appealing, if youthful, nonchalance, seems equally at home with the physical and the conceptual." However, Chris' nonchalant approach was not due to disinterest in craft but skepticism of all proscribed standards and a chuckling praise of folly. His exhibitions and accompanying book entitled Project Blue Book, documented the United States' vast archive of inconclusive evidence on the existence and threat of UFOs, he borrowed from Nick Toches’ biography of Dean Martin, titling a show, Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, another in tribute to an early Renaissance satirist, Adages of Erasmus followed by Confessions of a Crap Artist with a wink to Philip Roth.
Chris also had a legendary love for and knowledge of music, and for the final decade of his life was actively exploring and creating sound works drawn from his field recordings, original lyrics and vocal gibberish, using an esoteric array of equipment, which he often synched to his original videos. He enjoyed his role as an admired, if crowd-baffling, DJ. In response to the usual drunken requests for pop hits, Wilder was famously known to play the full seventeen-minute version of Giorgio Moroder/Donna Summer's Love to Love You, Baby followed by one of the many migraine-inducing selections in his vast collection of drone/experimental/avant garde/noise records.
Chris took particular joy in teaching Fine Art for many years at UCLA, UCSD and Otis College of Art and Design, leaving a proud legacy of brilliant, thoughtful, skilled young artists, curators, critics and creators in his wake. Never teaching by doctrine or dogma, instead, he tailored his instruction and suggestions to his students based on his remarkable ability to truly listen to and see whoever was before him and help them discover what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it. His advice to every student was to keep going. Though Chris exhibited less frequently later in life, he always followed this advice, constantly working in his Santa Monica studio, completing a vast number of paintings, videos, photographs, and musical/sound works, as well as collaborating with other artists.
Christopher Wilder is survived and deeply missed by his longtime partner, Sheila Bowers and their three dogs, JuneBug, Chuy and Pixel, his sister Holly Wilder and nephew Maximum Wilder - Smith, and his stepmother Elaine Atherton – Wilder, alongside many beloved friends and colleagues. He was predeceased by his mother, Georgia Wilder, and father, Philip Wilder.
