Chauney Peck

Bang, Universe, Everything

March 31 – May 01, 2010

On March 31st SOIL opened Chauney Peck’s new solo show of sculptures and works on paper.

Peck will show a series of sculptures inspired by an exhibition of African fetish objects at the Musee du quai Branly in Paris. Borrowing from their visual vocabulary of wrapping, carving, accumulating and covering Peck transforms everyday found objects with layers of plaster, fluorescent string and fabric into mysterious shapes. Employing a hand-altered deck of playing cards or "chance cards" she determines the order of specific materials and colors. Like John Cage's use of I Ching for artistic divination, Peck believes in chance as a spiritual pathway to harness the uncertain nature of the universe. The chance cards offer her a practical tool to ask questions and a structure to guide uncharted possibilities.

Peck also uses chance in her vinyl works on paper. In a series of four drawings she used data from U.S. atomic bomb testing as the chance element. In the work A New Powerful God is Coming each strip of vinyl represents one of the people relocated due to the hydrogen bomb test Ivy Mike, which vaporized a small island. The title was derived from a translator's explanation to the native islanders, who did not have a word for bomb.

A special thanks goes to 4Culture and the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs for their partial funding and support of this project.