Sticks and Stones — Justin Chance

Sticks and Stones
Group exhibition, curated by Chadwick Gibson and Cheyenne Julien
Featuring the work of: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, Sarah Gail Armstrong, Justin Chance, Brandon Coley Cox, and Jasmine Nyende
March 24 – May 19, 2018 | Smart Objects, Los Angeles CA

Pictured left to right: Sarah Gail Armstrong, Justin Chance, Justin Chance, and Jasmine Nyende (far right)

Untitled (The Morning and the Evening and the Night), 2013–2017
Wet and needle felted wool, dyed cotton, silk, yarn, graphite, thread; quilted

Untitled (The Morning and the Evening and the Night), 2013–2017
Wet and needle felted wool, dyed cotton, silk, yarn, graphite, thread; quilted

Untitled (Musician), 2018
Dyed and knotted wool, air hardening clay, plastic bag, stethoscope

flower chasing a fast sun , 2017
Dyed and knotted wool, electric fan, gesso

Megazord MM (Power Quilt for Good Vibes and Ultra-Posterity), 2013
Wet and needle felted wool, cotton, silk, thread; quilted

Pictured left to right: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio and Justin Chance

flower chasing a fast sun, 2017

Press Release:

Material is not neutral, abstraction is not neutral. Generational trauma is woven into everything, from the cotton in a quilt to the bark of a tree. Bearing this reality in mind, the artists of Sticks and Stones engage process-based methods to transform their relationships to the world as we know it. The heart of any work lies in the process of its creation, and here process becomes at once both therapeutic and subversive. Abstraction is not used to erase the hand but rather to bring awareness to the bodies that are absent. Through process, a different kind of relationship with the constructed world emerges.

These works defy the legacy—endemic to art history and western culture in general—of depicting nature as idyllic pastoral landscapes waiting to be exploited. Instead, the natural world appears as nails peeled out of a tree (as in Aparicio’s ¿Y Quien Puede Descansar? (11th St. and Union St., Los Angeles, California)), handmade artifacts serving as reminders of radical self-care (Nyende’s Open Sky), quits and appliances blurring the boundary between the mass-produced and the personal (Chance’s Untitled (The Evening and the Morning and the Night)), shards from a geode seemingly formed by the compression of culture (Cox’s Alpha Expanse), and makeshift habitats pieced together to ward off trauma (Gail Armstrong’s Comfort).

Together, these artifacts form a sort of treehouse, assembled from the wreckage of history and with an eye toward a reclamation of the present. By refusing a passive stance toward the politics of material, these artists actively engage the material woven into the fabric of our everyday lives.

Chadwick Gibson & Cheyenne Julien