Walls that Border on the Absurd
In the hands of artist C.J. Chueca, walls become objects for philosophical inquiry.
What do walls do? The answer seems straightforward, but try to make one now. What comes to mind? They make good neighbors. They give us the gift of privacy, separateness. But this has its own complexities. Seclusion is about self-preservation, about keeping some part of ourselves still against the whirlwinds other people are constantly whipping up, but it also has to do with shame or embarrassment about what we do in private — the vices we keep under the mattress or in locked drawers. Artist C.J. Chueca makes walls the subject of her current exhibition at Y Gallery, Illuminations of Angie: Someone there is that doesn’t love a wall. In her hands, walls — formed from sections of plywood and plaster that are covered with ceramic tiles — become objects for this sort of philosophical inquiry. And behind their façades, she includes the nasty bits we’re hiding, made as replicas in ceramic: cigarette butts, bottle caps, toilet paper rolls — the waste that comes from using things, and using them up.
The walls too show evidence of human use and misuse. Their tiles are cracked and fissured, stained with dripped paint, glue, and solvents. They are worn down, and they are broken. One particular panel of coral tiles set adjacent to black tiles is especially evocative for me. This wall is itself unbroken; nevertheless, at its foot is a trail of crumbled tile borne from somewhere else. We always bring our detritus with us. We are creatures of absurd habits, setting up walls to hide who we are, then using them as surfaces on which to hang our fears of being overwhelmed by the other. Chueca’s walls, much like this presidential election season, make visible the cyclical nature of our senselessness. We construct walls convinced that something crucial will be preserved. We want to halt time. Then, when we have managed to forget why they were put up in the first place, we tear them down in celebration with laughter and in tears.
C.J. Chueca’s Illuminations of Angie: Someone there is that doesn’t love a wall continues at Y Gallery (319 Grand Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan) through November 18.
