Chaos Theory: The Spectrum of Black Abstraction

Bronx River Arts Center x All Street Gallery

October 31st - December 7th

Chaos Theory: The Spectrum of Black Abstraction is a group exhibition of new and recent works by a group of black artists interpreting the theme of black abstraction through sculpture, assemblage, photography, printmaking, and painting. Depictions of voids, deconstructed bodies, and synesthetic emotional states offer diverse approaches to how blackness might be defined. Precarious, intricate, and even ephemeral materials depicting the human form underscore its fragility. Yet through abstraction, the self dissolves into textures, feelings, and concepts left open to observation and interpretation. Chaos Theory: The Spectrum of Black Abstraction features work by Abreale, Amani Heywood, Austin Sley Julian, Christl Stringer, Freddie L. Rankin II, Garry Grant and Shangari Mwashighadi. The exhibition is curated by Ciaran Short.

The exhibition draws its inspiration from Black Studies and Humanities scholar Christina Sharpe’s likening the black experience to the weather: “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). What we must know is how to navigate the weather and – in an ideal climate – learn how to predict the weather. While the weather is widely acknowledged to be unpredictable, there are a series of very real factors that determine weather systems. However, since these factors are seemingly beyond human control and direct interference, it can feel easier to assume the weather is random, rather than accepting the limitations of human understanding. Yet there is an inherent power that stems from accepting the inevitability of chaos; from such an admission comes a greater sense of sovereignty over one’s self. 

The artists on view offer interpretations of abstraction and blackness that were equally diverse, demonstrating an absence of a monolithic black identity, as well as artistic identity. If black experiences are anything but singular, this suggests that there is also no singular way to achieve disruption. Chaos Theory: The Spectrum of Black Abstraction seeks to foster an environment that is not only permissive but also encouraging of difference and multiplicity of identity. The exhibition exemplifies that even when we enact definitions to create a semblance of order – blackness, abstraction – the borders of these definitions are permeable. This anarchical, chaotic disruption makes room for fluidity, coexisting and even conflicting truths.