Benjamin Chickadel:
Nature may be the subject of Chickadel’s art, but reminiscence is its source. Born in Delaware, the artist moved with his family to Montana at age ten and passed his remaining childhood there and in Seattle. He spent much of his time in the wilderness, hiking and fly-fishing with his father and brother, so his art is personal, recalling the setting of those earlier times. But it also invites us to contemplate the human tendency to mythologize nature.
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In Land of Pine Trees, part of an untitled group show of Art Institute alumni and students, Chickadel has manufactured an artificial forest from the real forest: nearly 1,000 paper trees populate an immense plywood tabletop. But what matters most about the scene is not its expanse–12 feet by 12 feet–or even the faux pines standing 2 to 12 inches above their bent-paper anchors. Rather, despite being arranged in a pattern that mimics the real forest, the installation seems designed to advertise its own artificiality. Individually cut from white card stock, the trees are left unpainted. The plywood also is untreated, its bare surface visible between the densely packed paper trunks. Standing over the installation, staring down at the web of shadows cast by the trees on the swirling wood grain, you’re struck by just how distant this replica is from the original, and by the possibility that this signifies a chasm between civilization and nature.
This psychological emphasis could be seen in a collection of sculptures Chickadel contributed to the group exhibition “Sculpture, Installation, and Photography” at the Bodybuilder and Sportsman gallery in August. Reflecting his admiration for Japanese art and design, these paper sculptures of moose, bears, and other forest creatures began as line drawings of the animals’ outlines only. He then cut out the line itself, producing a ribbon of paper perhaps an eighth of an inch wide, and hung the cutout from a single nail. Once suspended, they drooped into fluid caricatures, like illustrations from an abstract pop-up book. Drawn from memory, the animals were perfectly anthropomorphized: funny, engaging, and anything but natural.
