The Freight + Volume Gallery in Chelsea is currently featuring a joint installation of works by artists Jay Critchley and Chad Person. Critchley’s two part installation Deep Bones features a sports car, in the main gallery area, with its parts removed and wrapped in hundreds of recycled plastic shopping bags, and placed back in the car. Right above the mummified car, there are more recycled plastic shopping bags covering the ceiling.
This exhibition also features a video by Critchley titled NRC – An Atomic Journey that highlights a journey he made in 1988 to various abandoned nuclear power sites and facilities across the U.S. while he was president of the Nuclear Recycling Consultants (NRC). Chad Person’s exhibition A Hero Never Fails revolves around themes of heroism, manifest destiny, and apathy. The primary attraction of Person’s exhibition is an inflatable balloon caricature of the 1950’s cartoon character “Underdog,” who is designed to project apathy as he sits slumped forward staring tiredly at his iPhone.
Person describes the work as three parts culture, and one part self portrait and also adds, “In a political state dominated by an agenda of distract the public and rob what’s left, with two endless wars draining the last of my great grand-children's hope for prosperity, why be anything but apathetic to injustice? Hero is a metaphor for my own vocational and economic struggle, my country’s role on the global stage, and whatever is left of my American dream. If creation is thought moved to action and object, then art making is an incredibly heroic effort (perhaps more so in this economy). Has the time come for heroism? Or should we just give up, sit back, and have a good laugh?”
At The Freight + Volume Gallery (530 W. 24th St.) through September 10. The gallery is open from Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m.
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