In Profile in Ecstasy, Dallas Contemporary presents the most expansive look yet at artist and designer Chris Wolston, whose work bridges material tradition and contemporary imagination. Moving between studios in Brooklyn and Medellín, Wolston draws from ancestral craft, ecological awareness, and the exuberant language of performance. His furniture and sculpture blur boundaries between body and object, utility and expression, often with a sensuality that feels both ancient and newly charged.
Here, he speaks with PATRON about materiality, collaboration, and the transformative possibilities embedded in clay, metal, and light.
PATRON: You’ve described your practice as one rooted in material fluency. What does that phrase mean to you, and how has it evolved between Brooklyn and Medellín?
Chris Wolston: For me material fluency means being able to think and speak through materials. It’s about understanding how a material behaves, and how it resists. In Medellín, that dialogue is constant. Clay, metal, and wicker are part of daily life, carried through the hands of artisans who inherit and evolve these traditions. Brooklyn, on the other hand, offers a conceptual distance that allows me to reflect on those processes. Moving between the two keeps me balanced. Medellín grounds me in craft and collaboration, while Brooklyn pushes me to frame the work in new contexts.
P: Your Fulbright research into pre-Columbian ceramics seems to have reshaped your understanding of material culture. How did that experience transform your sense of what design could do or say?
CW: That experience changed everything. In Colombia, I saw how clay exists simultaneously as a contemporary and ancient material. It taught me that design can be a living conversation between the past and the present. Pre-Columbian ceramics in particular carried both utility and ritual. They were functional, but they also told stories about belief, identity, and transformation. That duality continues to inform how I think about design as something both physical and emotional.
P: Collaboration with artisans in Colombia is central to your process. How do you approach authorship in that context, what does collaboration look like in practice, and how does it alter your relationship to the work?
CW: Collaboration is the foundation of my practice. I work directly with artisans in Medellín, often in small family workshops that specialize in weaving, sand-casting, or ceramics. We experiment together, and that process often leads us into uncharted territory. I might bring an unconventional sketch or sculpted model, and we figure out together how to make it real. That exchange requires openness and trust. Authorship becomes shared, because each person’s skill and intuition shape the final piece. It is less about control and more about finding a shared rhythm in making.
P: The installation at Dallas Contemporary references a runway or drag ball, a place where identity and performance blur. How do you see your objects performing, and what role does theatricality play in your work?
CW: Every object in my practice has a personality. I think of them as performers or characters, each with its own energy. Glenn Adamson and I wanted the show to feel like a pageant, where every work gets its moment under the lights. The runway structure at Dallas Contemporary brought that sense of movement and spectacle to life. I like the idea that furniture can have attitude, that it can pose or flirt. Theatricality helps the work cross from function into feeling. It invites viewers to imagine how their own bodies might move within that space.
P: The Grace Jones fountain at the center of the exhibition feels like a nexus of movement, light, and reverence. What drew you to her as a subject, and how does she embody the spirit of “ecstasy” for you?
CW: Grace Jones represents transformation. She embodies strength, sensuality, and the freedom to exist beyond definition. The fountain was inspired by Jean-Paul Goude’s photograph of her mid-pose, caught in that suspended state between control and release. To me, that is what ecstasy is: a moment of transcendence where the body becomes expression itself. The piece also carries a personal connection. The creative relationship between Jones and Goude mirrors my collaboration with David Sierra, who created the video works in the show. It felt right that she would anchor the exhibition, radiating power and vitality.
P: Your practice often folds the human body into the landscape, where arms become chair backs and flora bloom into architecture. What’s behind this merging of nature and figure?
CW: I see the human body and the natural world as deeply connected. Both evolve through growth, tension, and transformation. When I weave wicker around a metal frame, it feels like wrapping the object in skin. When I shape terracotta, it feels muscular, almost anatomical. Plants, bodies, and architecture all share a kind of organic structure. The line between them is porous. That merging allows me to create objects that feel alive, as if they might continue to grow or move after you leave the room.
P: Many of your materials carry ecological or sustainable implications, yet the work never reads as didactic. How do you think about environmental urgency in a poetic or sensorial way?
CW: I try to approach sustainability through intimacy rather than instruction. In Medellín, people are incredibly resourceful with what they have, and that mindset naturally shapes how we work in the studio. I use local materials like mimbre or terracotta not because I’m making a statement, but because they are part of the environment and culture around me. Each material holds a memory of the Earth and of the people who transform it. That connection is already ecological. The goal is not to preach, but to show how beauty and care can come from what is near at hand.
P: Your pieces challenge the boundary between art and design. Do you see those categories as useful distinctions, or have they become irrelevant in your practice?
CW: I think those boundaries have become less relevant. For me, design and sculpture are just two ways of exploring the same questions. A chair can hold a body, but it can also hold a story or emotion. Function doesn’t limit expression. It can actually heighten it. I’m interested in how an object affects you physically and psychologically at the same time. Whether it sits in a living room or a museum doesn’t change that relationship.
P: You share your Medellín studio with your husband, filmmaker David Sierra, whose video works appear throughout Profile in Ecstasy. How do your practices inform one another?
CW: David’s work brings movement and time into my world. He documents the process of making, capturing not only the labor but the rhythm and improvisation that happen in the studio. Seeing my work through his lens changed how I think about performance and gesture. The videos give the objects context and breath. Our practices meet in storytelling, in how we translate the act of making into a shared visual language. The show at Dallas Contemporary is really a collaboration between us, blending sculpture, film, and sound into one environment.
P: Looking back, what do you see as the throughline in your work, the question you keep asking, no matter the medium?
CW: I’m always asking how materials can change, and what they can reveal when pushed beyond their limits. That curiosity drives everything. Whether I’m working with clay, metal, or wicker, I’m drawn to the moment when a material starts to act in unexpected ways. Transformation is the thread that connects it all.
P: How has your relationship to beauty changed over time?
CW: I used to think of beauty as harmony, but now I see it more as tension. I find beauty in friction, in the meeting of rough and refined, or organic and constructed. The presence of the hand, the seams, and imperfections all make an object feel alive. Beauty is no longer about polish or perfection for me. It’s about energy and transformation, the sense that something is still in motion.