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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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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).

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

2016 – 2023

Images

Drawings, Paintings

A collection of images from 2016 to today.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.”

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

2019

Hot Torta

Drawings

Products from another place and another time just next door to ours.

Hot Torta was a show with Ehren Salazar.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

2016

Weird Alcohol

Video

Weird Alcohol is a animated video made for the EP release the Taste of a New Generation on Squiggle Dot.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

2008 – 2015

Images

Drawing, Painting

Collection of favorite images from 2008–2015 including pages from an unpublished volume called A Fool’s Gold.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

2012

Bad Choices

Video

Bad Choices is a music video for the band Shout Out Out Out Out. Indecision can still be a decision.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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. 

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

2002

One

By Audio Ahdeo Awdio (YupZone)

One is the first AAA (then as Audio Ahdeo Awdio) album originally released on cassette in 2002.

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

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.

Instagram   |   Bandcamp  |  Behance

Chris_von_Szombathy_artist_designer_musician

© 2023 Yup zone