By Julia Morton
Who are you? Artist Amelie Chabannes asks that question as she explores the concept of identity in her solo show titled Vast. Given the constant media bombardment, knowing who we are has never been more challenging. Though her subject and style are not fashionably new, Chabannes’ thoughtfully crafted objects offer memorable clues to help us better understand our vast, yet intimate identities.
“Oskar, Alma and I #2” by Amelie Chabannes
A rocky abstract composition mounted on the wall near the entrance suggests all the basic categories of life: plant, animal and mineral. Additionally, the elements that litter its surfaces and pierce “the body” have blurred the object’s boundaries, raising questions about whether acquired characteristics are factors in self-definition.
Chabannes uses the story of Oscar Kokoschka and the doll he had made of his lost love Alma Mahler, to question whether identity is a tangible thing, or is it located in the memories attached by others to inanimate objects, times and places? In a series of self-portrait masks encased in plastic boxes, Chabannes exposes the competition between external and internal forces for control of one’s identity. The faces—papier-mâché masks divided into multi-color areas outlined in black and assigned numbers—have been carefully mapped out. Yet around the faces, un-cataloged influences, in the form of causations, are reshaping the image, suggesting that our identities are merely scaffolding.
Two stacked topographies, standing waist high in the middle of the gallery, use multi-colored striations and evolving surfaces to describe the glacial and layering processes that renew and erode our identities over time. On the gallery floor, Chabannes has spread a patch of sand that visitors are welcome to walk on in order to illustrate that, while identity may appear consistent, random forces make it as vulnerable to change as shifting sand.
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Through Mar. 31, Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, 29 Orchard St., 212-343-4240.
