CHICKEN :: GROUP SHOW [2009]

An installation piece featuring two chicken creatures with accompanying stories. These are large-scale digital prints of layered drawing, photography and scanned objects. The installation is composed of these prints atop two 8' x 5' backdrops with original stencils. Shown in November, 2009 as part of the Chicken show, curated by Emmett Ramstad, at the Spare Room Project, San Francisco, CA.

The Twin Protective Chickens.

Once upon a time, that flush trickster Zeus disguised himself as a swan, (but who's to say it wasn't a chicken?) and seduced the mortal woman Leda, riving her marbled thighs with his mottled neck. She proceeded to lay a giant egg, from which her twin offspring sprang - their skins aglow and egg teeth shining. They were named Castor, which means 'beaver' in Greek and Latin, and Pollux, Greek for 'much sweet wine.'

Horned and feathered, these birds were tough. They were siblings, lovers, partners in crime. As they roamed the streets at night, Castor would rend limbs from the bodies of anyone who threatened them or the lives of others. Castor's specialty, though, was in taking the tails from rodent's behinds. It earned Castor the nickname 'pluck' - meaning to pull out from the place of growth, or courage and resolution in the face of difficulty. Castor revealed the beauty of layers and the simplicity of logic in the vast amounts of everything that can be cataloged infinitely and accessed in an instant. The unreal, the faith in the ease of digital existence, the closer we come to nothing. Wherever Castor roamed, where there was once paper, there is now light. Where there was once a face, there are now electronic pulses, the bright star's glow refracted in plastic wheels of a toy monster truck discarded on the gum-stuck sidewalk, teetering on the edge of the gutter's gaping maw.

Pollux had razor sharp claws that could shred corrugated metal and allowed Pollux to scale the sides of buildings with little effort or sound, always on the lookout. So Pollux got to be called 'fetch' - which is a harbinger of death, a granter of knowledge of all things past and things to come. From whispers and secrets, Pollux excavated future remains and begin building tiny versions of our world in stories. So later we would know where to go when we're out on the streets without recollection of which way is up or down, north or south. Pollux spat back all our moans and utterances with the retentive hiccup of pop song memory, an unexpected guide to the where it is we get to.

And soon, even the whisper of the word 'chicken' spread an oily coating of fear in the hearts of all who wronged others for sport or without mercy.