Survey 4: Pinned by a shaft of light through the window
@ Chicago Artist Coaltion
2130 W Fulton St Unit B, Chicago, IL 60612
Opening Friday, September 30th, from 5PM - 8PM
On view through Thursday, November 10th
You once told me that memory is a choice. But if you were god, you’d know it’s a flood.
–Ocean Vuong
If we are to describe memory to you, it would be a sentence, an image, or something we point at. But memory precedes precision. It comes first as a feeling that engulfs you before you realize what it is. A bodily impulse. From there on you begin to make sense of it. You verbalize it by tracing where it stems from. You represent it as a figuration, an object. You abstract it, take it apart and reassemble. You hide it in your back pocket where it only shows its vague contour.
Raw memories stay elusive, agile, and volatile. So what we can show you is a collection of conditions. They are moments of possibility: the happiness, distress, or ambivalence of having; the beginnings of stories. Like when you find yourself sitting in a quiet room, contemplating, or flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling, missing somewhere, desiring someone. Like when you ask “what if?” and blend the past with fantasy. Like when you withhold like a brave dam, turning falls into power.
This show offers glimpses into the expressions of twelve incredible artists. One shade of their rainbows; one facet of their prisms. You will feel the tender caress from the ancestors (Maria-Antonia Villaseñor-Marchal), study the wielding of calendars (Josué Esaú), and see your flickering reflection on a TV screen (Breanna Robinson). You will delve into collective memories through archives (James Hosking), through haptic weavings (Jessica Ferrer), and through architectural interiors (Luis Rodriguez Rosario).
Sometimes, childhood emerges as dreams (Eseosa Edebiri). Sometimes the forgotten bursts like popcorn (Mariel Harari). Sometimes, memory is like flipping through infinite pages (Yoonshin Park). Memory is also a past reimagined, a psychological non-place where we, as passersby, formalize our latent impulses (Chloe Munkenbeck), walk the labyrinth of our trauma (Becca Thomas), and examine alienation with intimacy (Sungjae Lee).
The show itself will also become a memory—your memory. And we hope it’s briefly remarkable.
Nicky Ni, Vasia Rigou, & John H. Guevara
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Tags: Breanna Robinson, Chicago, Chicago Artists' Coalition, Eseosa Edebiri, Jessica Ferrer, John H. Guevara, Josué Esaú, Luis Rodríguez Rosario, María Antonia Villaseñor-Marchal, Mariel Harari, Nicky Ni, Sungjae Lee, Survey 4: Pinned by a shaft of light through the window, Vasia Rigou, West Town, Yoonshin Park
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