Christopher Varmus is a visual artist based in Gowanus, Brooklyn, working across ink, collage, sculpture, and installation. He often uses nontraditional surfaces such as Yupo paper and transparent film to build layered, gestural compositions that pair sculptural forms with large translucent ink banners. Varmus completed an MFA residency at Clark University's Mass MoCA program in January 2025 and has shown work in the group exhibition "Porous Worlds" at Mass MoCA. His practice draws on a background in social work and gardening, treating making as a form of relational care and an inquiry into how materials hold memory, with recent pieces shaped by conversations across Brooklyn, upstate New York, Worcester, and North Adams, Massachusetts.

My work moves between ink, collage, and installation—an attempt to map the unstable edges of experience. Using nontraditional surfaces like Yupo and transparent film, I build layered fields where gesture, residue, and chance collaborate. Each piece begins as an improvisation, but what remains are traces of care and repair: a visual language of persistence. Drawing from a background in social work and gardening, I think of making as a form of relational care—an inquiry into how materials hold memory and how attention becomes its own medium. The process often echoes daily negotiation: between clarity and blur, self and collective, grief and humor. Recent works incorporate elements of community and collaboration, informed by conversations across places—Brooklyn, Upstate New York, Worcester, and North Adams. The studio becomes a porous site where private reflection meets shared space. My goal is to create work whose meaning will continue to evolve within the spaces it inhabits, sparking curiosity in viewers and rewarding close inspection.