Here, we ask an artist to frame the essential details behind a recent work.
Your name: Connor Wright
Your age: 28
Where you’re based: New York City
Instagram: @byconnorwright
Title of work: Untitled
Where to see it: On view in “Alexa, Truth or Dare?” Curated by Jesse Bandler Firestone.
Three words to describe it: Spellbinding, undeniable, devotional.
What was on your mind at the time: I was thinking about how acts of celebration and devotion often carry a buried undertow of danger, and how communities create meaning through shared gestures and collectivity. The work is based off of a photograph from a Saint John’s Eve bonfire in Spain, where people leap over flames to ward off bad spirits. That collision of superstition, athleticism, and communal performance felt incredibly alive to me. I wasn’t interested in illustrating the scene, but in translating that surreal, ecstatic moment—bodies suspended mid-air, fire lifting upward—into a psychological landscape.
An interesting feature that’s not immediately noticeable:The structure of the painting comes directly from the choreography of the original photo: the arc of the leap, the triangular geometry of the fire, and the strange blur where the camera catches a figure mid-motion. Even though the final work dissolves into abstraction, the piece is anchored in those very specific movements of feet lifting off the ground, shoulders twisting, embers rising. Viewers often feel a sense of propulsion in the composition without realizing they’re responding to the ghost of that exact leap over a bonfire.
How it reflects your practice as a whole: My practice always begins with an emotionally loaded image—often something mundane, archival, or culturally specific. Then I break the image apart and rebuild in my own graphic language. This work reflects the way I use photography not as documentation but as a spark for intuition, gesture, and embodiment. I’m often interested in moments where masculinity, risk, and performance blur together, and this image offered all three. The piece holds onto the ritualistic heat of the original scene while moving fully into abstraction, which is where my work feels most honest and alive.
