'The Hand Loves That Which is Hard' is an ongoing photo-performance project that began in Banff, Alberta in 1996, and contributes as a component to an overall conceptual practice that involves the exclusive investigation and use of line marker paint - the civic employed paint that constructs the limits, borders and boundaries we live with. Involving the re-painting of the lines on the road, not as an act of civil disobedience, but rather as a means to champion the hand over machine, the process also indexes notions of code, aesthetics, and labour. As a performance, the activity is non-splendorous, perhaps mundane, while at the same time ritualistic and mulishly insistent amongst the daily urban interruptions and distractions. The resulting photographs are read as a diary of doings; as parallel evidence with what is on the augmented road. The performance produced for 'and then we take berlin' is slated to take place initially on Young Street and then at various selected sites in Kitchener over a number of days.
C. Wells has exhibited across Canada and was a contributing artist to the 1994 Expo Arte: Le Forum de la Theorie de l'art Contemporain in Guadalajara, Mexico through Winnipeg's Plug-In Gallery. Other selected recent exhibitions include: Mitchell: Southwest Triennial, London Regional Art and Historical Museum, 1998 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art, Glenbow Museum / Edmonton Art Gallery, A to B: Post-Aesthetic Painting, The New Gallery, Calgary. A solo exhibition of his work will take place in March of 2002, at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton.
Wells received his B.F.A. from the University of Guelph, and then studied at McMaster University and the Ontario College of Art before receiving a BEd (Art/History) from the University of Manitoba. He currently lives and works in Hamilton.