Long Distance — Justin Chance

Long Distance
October 26 – November 30, 2018 | Los Angeles CA
SMART OBJECTS
Link to exhibition text

Somewhere Over, 2018
Wet and needle felted wool, dyed silk, cotton, crayon, graphite, pastel thread; quilted

Columbus (Beanstalk), 2018
Wet and needle felted wool, dye, dyed and burned silk, cotton, thread; quilted

Cartoon, 2018
Wet and needle felted wool, dye, dyed silk, thread, graphite; quilted

A English Rose , 2018
Piled wool, standing fan, gesso, cotton ball

The World When I'm Gone 2017–2018
Erased graphite and crayon on paper

Valley Stream, 2018
Embroidery on cotton, enamel

Michael, 2018
Dyed and piled wool, electric fan, masking tape, dyed cotton ball

Left to right:
Searchlight, 2018
The Distance, 2018
Long Distance 2018

Installation (clockwise):

A English Rose, 2018
Michael (Sunsetting), 2017
Searchlight, 2018
Valley Stream, 2018

Stills from video Long Distance, 2018
A compilation of collected karaoke videos, displayed muted on loop throughout exhibition
full video here

Songs featured include:
Rocket Man –––> Elton John
Part of Your World ----> Horward Ashman & Alan Menken
Wherever, Whenever ----> Shakira, Timothy Mitchelll, Gloria Estenfan

Long Distance is an exhibition exploring distance––––the way Jack did, when he climbed up the beanstalk and entered the Giant’s home (uninvited), or Dorothy, who needed a natural disaster (and concussion) to imagine a world outside of Kansas.

Exploring distance, the way The English Language did….when it lunged itself from its tiny-island sitting-position across the world. It was such a strain, in fact, this stretching, that it sweat into the Atlantic, into the Pacific, the Indian and eventually the Arctic (watering the algae, which the fish ate, who were eaten by bigger fish, who were then eaten by people, who were then eaten by the ground, which was then eaten by the sea once more and so on and so forth…)

Exploring distance the way that black and brown people did––––when they were borrowed from their homes and respective continents to garden elsewhere. Exploring distance, the way The English Language explored distance over these Black and Brown people–––into their synapses, over their tongues, through the tiny spaces between their tiny teeth and also their children’s.

Considering distance and its violence (the removed), its romances (those moved by it), its grace, its naivety, Long Distance is a consideration of relationships.

Relationships to and across:

a) space
b) time
c) mortality
d) home
d) the familiar
e) the foreign
f) the near
h) the very far away
h) the hard to see
g) the blatantly obvious
i) race
j) English

All the while unfolding, unfolding, unfolding, unfolding, constantly expanding, constantly obscuring, constantly fogging up and getting harder to see, etc…(like home, like family, like paradise, like deep space, like you.)

Jack’s Giant was in a long distance relationship with the ground and it killed him.