WITH GUEST CURATOR SUSAN GESCHEIDLE

KC CROW MADDUX

THROAT

12/13 - 1/24

This new series of objects feature dioramas made from collaged airbrushed paintings. The collages are recessed and enclosed; only visible via a silhouette incised through the front plane of a shallow white box. 

The architecture of the box both obstructs and reveals. The collaged world inhabits the shape of the cut silhouette and extends behind and beyond what we can see.

The silhouette becomes the positive visual figure via a removal of material from the box or “frame”. The frame has invaded the geography of the artwork’s field of play, the face. Painting and frame have a dynamic of mutual codetermination. This work speaks to the existential contortions of living within the limits of signification.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Many of America’s cultural “truths” have historically been, presently are, or will be revealed as mere stories; laundered into truth via imaginative use of science, media, and religion- for the purposes of hegemonic structures like the patriarchy, capitalism, and government. Think gender roles or paper currency. Even the United States of America is really just a set of ideas projected on a chunk of land and people.

I am trans (FtM), and as I transitioned I dropped through the trapdoor of one of these tales (dimorphic sex and gender), and the larger house of cards collapsed around me. It is tragic, though revelatory to see how differently the world treats you with a deepened voice and facial hair.  I often now feel like I am embedded in a cult or maybe a tourist in Plato’s cave. 

This work is not about being trans.

It’s about being trapped in signification. In my case, I’m invisibly trans, meaning I look like I was born male though I was not. I look like I would have a shared set of circumstances, references, and drives to CIS men, but I do not. My transness is effectively illegible so the “default male’ set of expectations follow me around all day. This creates a complicated set of social projections for me to navigate if I am also to be authentic. Disclosure in the wrong context often leads to even more confusion.

My experience with the failure of signification, is maybe just a more extreme version of what all of us encounter. I imagine, few of us are seen the way we see ourselves. Few specific individuals actually reflect the generalizations associated with “types” of people. When I ask “what is a man?”- I literally don’t know.

With apocalyptic humor and pathos, my work takes aim at stories of power relations, capitalism, identity, gender, and religion.

Motifs include the body as matter + language, The Grid, architectures of oppression, pattern, guts, chaos, mythologies, text, and sex jokes.

Tala Gallery

1644 W Chicago Ave

Chicago, IL