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SHOWN: Installation view, JAMIE DILLION: FUN CONTROL, Marginal Utility, June 2013. IMAGE: Matt KalaskyEscaping Chelseito
Matt Kalasky"I think I'm going to paint on the walls with my ass again. This time will be different though, my ass has changed."
-Jamie Dillion
Let us start our own gallery. In Philadelphia it is easy. If you have ten friends and $100 dollars to spare each month you can do it. You can establish your own exhibition space and, with no relation to hyperbole,
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But despite this profound liberty, most local non-profit spaces elect to adopt a homogenous and unquestioned approach. A cognitive zone called Chelseito. This diminutive borough is a place of fantasy where all of our artistic aspirations (and insecurities) are played out in an elaborate theatre. Every first friday, 319 N. 11 St. is transformed into a massive dollhouse, each room a Chelsea gallery in miniature. We play charade “professionalism” shaking hands, making “connections,” so that when the Monopoly man stops by he can buy out the show. But we all know that he is not coming; will never come.
And thank god.
It is as if we in Philadelphia (and elsewhere) are practicing for the day when the grown ups will let us sit at the table and play their game--a game that leaves artists off balance, ashamed, and isolated. It is time for us to wake up from this nightmare that we want to believe is a sweet wet dream. It is time for us to escape.
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At its exterior Chelseito is the tired white walls and vinyl lettering from 40 years of stagnant exhibition practices. At its core, it is an unquestioned fidelity to the marriage between The Commercial Space and The Exhibition Space. A bond forged through a simple unspoken vow: to exhibit is to sell. Which is not a huge surprise considering the meta union of capitalism and our lived reality. When we ask our children ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ what we really ask is, ‘what do you want your profession to be?’ In our world, your job and your being are one in the same. As Slavoj Žižek has famously pointed out: It is easier to imagine the end of the world then to imagine the end of capitalism. In New York and in other choice localities with healthy populations of buyers, sellers, and producers this
exhibition and commercial sympatico plays out with the efficiency and beauty of a meat grinder. Chelsea is a machine designed to make a few artist famous and the rest of them brutalized.
But in Chelseito there are no buyers. Only us. And we are left in a hollow reality talking to imaginary money men.
Why are we here? Why do we stay? Is it a failing of the collectives? Of the artists? Paradoxically, Chelseito is the product of both a stubborn commitment to fantasy and the failing of our collective imagination. Chelseito is constructed when we refuse to let go of the grand aspirations sold to us hand-over-fist in art school. The dead dream: a-glamorous-tenured-track-gallery-represented-SOHO-apartment-life is the brick and mortar of Chelseito. At all times it is this spectral looming presence that prevents us from envisioning alternatives and realizing the potential of our surroundings. We occupy Chelseito because we take the best things about Philadelphia and try to make them New York.
So how do we escape? The first step is acceptance. Accept that we have Chelseito and not Chelsea and be extremely thankful. Remember, this is all a self-inflicted delusion and when can shake it off when we are ready. To do so, we must first begin by understanding the differences between Philadelphia and New York, not as failings, but as opportunities. For example, while Philadelphia might lack the financial resources of other cities, what we have in abundance is freedom. The radical freedom to
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DOWHATEVER
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And this is how we achieve escape velocity. With no restrictions and nothing to sell we can fill our art spaces with whatever we want. We could fill them with conversation. We could fill them with people. We could fill them with enigma. We could fill them with ideas. We could fill them with food. We could fill them with love. We could fill them with communities of friends not networks of connections. We could fill them with education. We could fill them with action. We could establish territories where there is nothing to covet or sell just the negation of imagined responsibility and the embrace of wide open anything. We could leave Chelseito far behind and hang out in a place that is our own.
We could go if you want to.
When do we leave?
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