CMPST

Andy Graydon
Blasto (a collaborative of Ben Sloat and Anssi Taulu

November 05 - 28, 2026
Opening Reception, Thursday, November 05, 5-8pm

Gallery Hours:
Friday–Sunday, 11am–4pm

CMPST 

Andy Graydon, Ben Sloat, Anssi Taulu

The three artists in this exhibition come from locations defined by relationships of geo-political power: Hawaii, Taiwan, and Finland. Each setting is often defined by colonial and post-colonial frictions between individuals and the systems which marginalize, erase, and control their voices. In a time of great uncertainty, such as the one we find ourselves in at present day, these frictions become manifest in even wider arenas. 

Sloat and Taulu have been making work as the collaborative, Blasto. This project is a collaboration, but also an accumulation where they have gathered materials and imagery in America, Asia, Scandinavia, North Africa, the Baltic States, and Western Europe to add to their living, changing, sculptural works that absorb history and express the tensions of our present. 

ARTIST BIOS // STATEMENTS

Andy Graydon is an artist and filmmaker originally from Maui, Hawai’i. His work is concerned with natural and social ecologies, and with sound and listening as creative practices. Recent projects have focused on island ecologies and the imaginal and narrative forms employed by the natural sciences. His projects frequently engage structures of music such as the ensemble, the score, improvisation and variation, and techniques of the voice. Often ephemeral in nature, Graydon’s work combines minimal physical materials with elements that are absent, fictional, or imaginary. 

His work has been presented internationally including shows at the New Museum; Mass MoCA; Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; Frye Art Museum, Seattle; and the Honolulu Biennial. Screenings include the Fulcrum Festival, Los Angeles; the Flaherty Series at Anthology Film Archives; WRO Media Arts Biennial, Poland; Arsenal Institut für Film und Videokunst, Berlin; Millennium Film Archive; Black Maria Film & Video Festival; Worldfest Houston and the Chicago Underground Film Festival.  | https://andygraydon.net

Ben Sloat often uses elements of the vernacular in his works; generating hybrid social meanings and reflecting the artist's multiracial Taiwanese-American background. Working across mediums, the projects frequently find themselves considering the capacity of iconography, image, or light-based material, in a wide and inclusive definition of the "photographic". Cultural vocabulary is commonly used as a medium in the work, oscillating between an intimately personal voice and a larger societal one. 

Born and raised in New York City, Ben Sloat earned degrees from UC Berkeley and SMFA/Tufts. His work has been shown in venues such as the Havana Biennial (Matanzas), Radium Art Center (Busan), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Copenhagen), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Dublin City Gallery/The Hugh Lane (Dublin), Peabody Essex Museum (Salem), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond), and the Queens Museum. Solo exhibitions include those at Das Klohauschen (Munich), Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston); Coop Gallery (Nashville), Galerie Laroche/Joncas (Montreal), Gallery 126 (Galway), Front Gallery (Oakland), and the American Cultural Center (Taipei).  | https://www.bensloat.com

Anssi Taulu's work navigates the intersection of built environments and natural processes, often examining the hidden forces that shape our surroundings. His sculptures and installations engage with cycles of time, material transformation, and the traces left by human intervention. Working across media, his practice is deeply informed by architecture, industrial aesthetics, and ecological transitions, exploring the tension between permanence and decay. Through layered compositions and spatial gestures, Taulu’s work operates between the tangible and the ephemeral, inviting reflection on the ways structures—both physical and ideological—govern our experience of space. 

Born and raised in Jyväskylä, Finland. Taulu graduated as a sculptor from Kankaanpää Art School in 1994 and completed his MFA at the University of the Arts Helsinki in 2022. His major solo exhibitions have been held at Galleria Sculptor in Helsinki, GalleriaKONE 

in Hämeenlinna, and Galerie Toolbox in Berlin, Germany. His environmental art project Wasp Factories has been realized in various locations, including Finland, Edinburgh, and London. Taulu’s works have been exhibited in Germany, Sweden, Scotland, Norway, Estonia, and he was invited to the Changwon Sculpture Biennale in South Korea in 2022.  | https://anssitaulu.com