BIO
Chris Rackley is a multidisciplinary artist based in Prior Lake, MN who integrates analog and digital media to explore the convergence of collective memory and personal narrative. During his childhood in the 1980s, Rackley’s family was relocated multiple times across South Carolina and Georgia by his father’s employer, a shoe company that owned retail locations in shopping malls. When he was not in school, Rackley played in the stockrooms of the stores his father managed and wandered alone through the crowds of people and the medley of stores inside the malls. Rackley’s current work draws upon his boyhood experience and addresses themes of displacement, isolation, and surveillance in the context of crumbling suburban utopias embodied by the structures of shopping malls.

Rackley earned an MFA in Painting from George Mason University and a BA in Studio Art from Davidson College. He has widely shown his work at institutions including the DeVos Art Museum (Marquette, MI), Boston Cyberarts (Jamaica Plain, MA), Transformer (Washington, DC), and Badischer Kunstverein (Karlsruhe, Germany). Rackley’s solo exhibitions include installations at the Phipps Center for the Arts (Hudson, WI, 2023), Kolman & Reeb Gallery (Minneapolis, 2023), Ridgewater College (Willmar, MN, 2019), and the Rochester Art Center (Rochester, MN, 2015). Rackley is a recipient of a 2024/25 McKnight Fellowship for Visual Artists, funded by the McKnight Foundation and administered by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. His work has been financially supported by a grant from Kolman & Reeb Gallery (2023), a grant from Springboard for the Arts (2020), an Art(ists) On the Verge Fellowship from Northern Lights (2018 - 2019), and grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board (2022 and 2018).

COLLABORATIONS + COMMUNITY PROJECTS
Rackley also periodically works collaboratively with other artists and offers workshops and creative opportunities for communities. See those projects by following the links below.

COLLABORATIONS / COMMUNITY PROJECTS