Christo is an environmental installation artist who has collaborated with wife Jeanne-Claude on massive, ambitious projects for the past 30 years. Rebelling against abstraction as "too theoretical," the Bulgarian-born Christo Vladimirov Javacheff pursued art comprised of real articles. He began wrapping commonplace items such as cans, bottles, magazines and cars with sheets of plastic and woven fabrics, believing that obscuring their function made them aesthetically pleasing. The scale of his projects eventually became enormous, the most well known being the Gates Project in New York’s Central Park. Christo and his wife strongly believe that art should be displayed outside museums, so it can be available to the widest possible audience.