Chris von Szombathy is an artist, designer, and musician based in Vancouver, Canada. His work combines candy-coated visuals and sounds with themes related to anxiety, comfort, and consumption.
Selected Works
2023 –
Quitting Time
Visual art
I quit smoking almost ten years ago and these are drawings about our time apart.
2023
Singular
Story Book
Singular is a grainy overview of the gears and facets that shape the universe based on a simple premise: that the awareness inside you is the only thing you can be sure is actually real
A new story book coming in 2023.
2023
Singular
Story Book
Singular is a grainy overview of the gears and facets that shape the universe based on a simple premise: that the awareness inside you is the only thing you can be sure is actually real
A new story book coming in 2023.
2014 – 2023
1000 Ducks
Drawing, Sculpture, Video
A tragic circumstance gave form to this illustrated inside joke and spanned a book, an album, and sculpture. 1000 illustrations of imaginary ducks.
New book edition coming soon.
2016
Wax
Video
At the beginning of the new millenium: everything is fusion.
Wax is the video and single from Fruit, the seventh release from AAA (YupZone).
2016
Wax
Video
At the beginning of the new millenium: everything is fusion.
Wax is the video and single from Fruit, the seventh release from AAA (YupZone).
░░░░░░ Visual ░░░░░░
2016 – 2023
Images
Drawings, Paintings
A collection of images from 2016 to today.
2019
International Foyer
Drawings, Booklet
Oversized pottery with exotic fronds frame hotel doorways and gated lobbies as conscripts of hospitality. From all across the galaxy.
Arrangements from the International Foyer are botanical, animal, mineral, and electric. Cleansing and growing with minimal care.
2018
Shrouds
Drawings, Booklet
T-shirts from an interdimensional t-shirt museum.
“Advances in technology have allowed us to preserve specimens of these kinds of shrouds from completely closed off areas of our intuitive machinery. For the first time ever we’re getting the opportunity to bring these tri-multiplex dimensional items to the public.”
2019
Hot Torta
Drawings
Products from another place and another time just next door to ours.
Hot Torta was a show with Ehren Salazar.
2017 – 2023
SpiceMart™
Sculpture, Drawing
SpiceMart™ was inspired by drugs, fast food, and anxiety. A state in the future where the war for your fear creates weapons of comfort. A pharmacological Wild West with characters of true altruism and devout corruption.
2016
Weird Alcohol
Video
Weird Alcohol is a animated video made for the EP release the Taste of a New Generation on Squiggle Dot.
2014
Blind
Video
Love is a costume, love is naked, love is elaborate, love is simple, love is clever, love is foolish, love is a vision, love is Blind.
The very first video from Zoo Age.
2008 – 2015
Images
Drawing, Painting
Collection of favorite images from 2008–2015 including pages from an unpublished volume called A Fool’s Gold.
2012
Love is in the Error
Sculpture
Love is in the Error: Pathetic Solutions to Pathetic Problems by Chris von Szombathy and Drew Shaffer.
This show of sculptural work put forth our mutual conception that our actions are both pathetic and divine; that what is gauche is more revealing than what is graceful.
2012
Bad Choices
Video
Bad Choices is a music video for the band Shout Out Out Out Out. Indecision can still be a decision.
2010
Soft Serve
Video
The new scientific method of aiding digestion through sound and video instruction.
Soft Serve is a music video from the AAA album Good for What Fails You.
2010
Esophagus Now
Drawing, Painting, Sculpture
Esophagus Now was a solo show at the UNIT/Pitt Project. Primarily a sculpture show; Esophagus Now is an interrogation and celebration of consumption, both literally and figuratively.
2007
Fire Away
Drawing, Painting, Sculpture
A non-narrative graphic novel, Fire Away was published in 2007 by Drawn & Quarterly. Called both surreal and iconic Fire Away contains both sculptural and 2D work.
░░░░░░ Audio ░░░░░░
2020
Yup zone
By Yupzone
Built to project positive and inquisitive energies (the yup) into your surroundings and body (your zone). You can’t stay forever but you can stay as long as you want.
An EP of gently insistent instrumental jazz-pop fusion.
2015
The Taste of a New Generation
By AAA (YupZone)
The crisp, refreshing flavor of the Taste of a New Generation.
Instrumental, sharp, and minimal: the new EP available now on Squiggle Dot
2015
100 Duck Calls
By Chris von Szombathy
100 Duck Calls is the audio companion to 1000 Ducks. 100 Ducks–75 freshwater and 25 coastal–brought to life in an ambient sound experience.
An artificially created natural recording. Ambient art.
2014
Fruit
By AAA (YupZone)
Fruit is a modern sound smoothie–sweet, fibrous, and healthy–and is now available both digitally and as a limited edition LP from Elestial Sound.
Being healthy has never sounded so good.
2002–2014
Entry
By Chris von Szombathy
An introduction to my music originally given away to my mailing list with selected pieces from 2002–2014.
A crash course; the dessert plate; the catchiest. Released in 2016.
2013
Zoo Age
By Zoo Age
Lightning in a bottle. The third album from myself and Tyler Greentree captures a complete sound and vision like little else. Squeaky clean layers of ethereal pop from a true meeting of the minds.
2010
Good For What Fails You
By AAA (Yupzone)
Good for What Fails You was created to aid digestion and to sooth both body and spirit. Food themed digital jazz fusion with a focus on catchy candy melodies and burping syrupy solos.
2009
The New Standard
By Zoo Age (Tour de Fours)
Circus highlights and baroque undertones erode and polish an off-kilter retro pop sound.
The New Standard was produced by me and Felix Fung at Little Red Sounds. This digital release has three previously unreleased songs.
2007
Atlantis
By Zoo Age (Tour de Fours)
Atlantis is the debut album from Tour de Fours (Zoo Age)–which is vocalist Tyler Greentree and myself. Released in 2007, Atlantis pumps a dreamy, strained atmosphere into the air.
Atlantis tries to recreate the lost city states in all of us.
2006
Let’s Prevent Noise by Ourselves
By AAA (YupZone)
Let’s Prevent Noise by Ourselves is the second album in the 2006 AAA trilogy. With a sparser sound Let’s Prevent Noise by Ourselves was written as an electronic album to help calm the nerves and spur the imagination.
2006
Nine Lives
By AAA (YupZone)
Nine Lives has a soft and gentle feel, as snappy drums and colour washed tones illustrate a cat’s life. A fuzzy, complicated sound for a fuzzy, complicated friend.
2006
Ready When You Are
By AAA (YupZone)
Ready When You Are was the first AAA album in the 2006 AAA trilogy (and the first to use multitrack recording). Ready When You Are lays the blueprint for the AAA sound.
2002
One
By Audio Ahdeo Awdio (YupZone)
One is the first AAA (then as Audio Ahdeo Awdio) album originally released on cassette in 2002.
2006–2008
Unfinished/Unreleased
By Zoo Age (Tour de Fours)
Unfinished/Unreleased 2006-2008 is a collection of unheard demo’s, instrumentals and mixes from Tour de Fours/Zoo Age)–ranging from sunny AM style pop, electro funk and minimal R&B.
