Feeling Climate Through Abstraction: Reflections on All Street Gallery’s ‘CHAOS THEORY’

Feb 8

"CHAOS THEORY: The Spectrum of Black Abstraction" opened Friday, February 2nd at All Street Gallery with an exhibition statement that reveals the show's inspiration is seeded in the writings of scholar Christina Sharpe. She writes: “The weather is the totality of our environments; the weather is the total climate; and that climate is anti-black. When the only certainty is the weather that produces a pervasive climate of anti-blackness, what must we know in order to move through these environments…?” (Sharpe 2017). With these words at the core of a concept that branched into stories of chaos and abstract art, viewers confront the pervasive climate of anti-blackness and its impact on individual and collective identities.

In All Street's intimate gallery space, impactfully curated by Ciaran Short and Jabari Butler, you’re moved through a space where each piece is offered a moment to breathe- to speak on its own in contribution to the collective narrative. From paintings and prints to sculptures, photography, and videography, the exhibition encompasses a wide range of artistic expressions where abstraction is consistently used almost as a medium itself. Throughlines emerged in motifs of deconstruction and reassemblage as well as explorations of perspective or scale.

CHAOS THEORY recons with Sharpe’s question, proposing the answer may be in a “lack of control,” and “constant state of preparedness.” To ride the weather metaphor, perhaps like bringing an umbrella “just in case” it rains, it can be unsafe not to take the side of caution. “There is a lack of control that black people must face in navigating the world regarding outward perception and the various ways perception reverberates through life in terms of safety, socioeconomics, and freedom,” the description states. That umbrella comes everywhere.

And the umbrella for the storms of social climates? Well, often it’s art. Certainly, that’s the case here. CHAOS THEORY points out that throughout history, various forms of black art have emerged as tools of resistance, from covert communication through song during slavery to the improvisational nature of jazz and hip-hop acting as an embrace of ‘chaos’.

Abstraction in particular comes into play here, serving as a potent tool for resistance within the exhibition. In part because it kind of directs viewers to participate and might even intentionally leave some knowledge only to those who understand it. “Not all art is inherently for all people;” they write, “some art can be for certain people and a certain level of confusion is not only acceptable, but should potentially be encouraged.” Beyond this point, by defying white-driven media’s tendency toward “palatability” or singular dimensionality, black artists reclaim agency over their narratives and challenge dominant hierarchies of representation. Through abstraction, chaos is used as a means of empowerment.

“perhaps the most radical and potent is the embrace of perceived chaos, to create without concern for a potential viewer or outside perception. While to truly create in a void is impossible, a self-imposed isolation from traditional critique and theory is the only way to subvert the forecast.”

In that refreshingly intentional dedication to abstraction and chaos theory, I divert to a Sontag-ian “Against Interpretation” thought cannon, which is mostly to say: This is not a show that wants to be reviewed or dissected or ‘interpreted’. Rather, it should be experienced and felt for its dynamic reality. So, I urge you: go feel it.

CHAOS THEORY will be on through the month of February at 77 East 3rd Street.

Exhibiting Artists:

programming calendar is as follows:

Opening Reception 2.2 @ 6pm - 9pm

Multimedia Art Showcase 2.11 @ 5pm - 8pm