Chambliss Giobbi: Murmuration

Fortnight Institute presents Murmuration, an ephemeral three-day event with Chambliss Giobbi.

 

When we stand in front of an iconic painting, it can be easy to get distracted. Aside from the painting’s beauty, there are always the sagas that the painting carries; the persona of the artist, the market value, etc. Waves of history, reviews, scholarship, theory, auction prices and innumerable tidbits of biographical flotsam cascade onto the viewer. The artwork has its’ own CV. Through this excess of information, it’s unavoidable not to be corralled into a distracted and curiously myopic way of viewing the work. While you are looking, how much room do you really have left to see?

 

My tiny wax paintings, made with melted Crayola crayons, try to address this. All of the iconic works I render have been pivotal and influential to me. By using such a difficult and counterintuitive medium to work with, as well as the miniaturized and out-of-proportion format, I’m attempting to reframe these works away from their iconic status. In this way, I can experience them in an intimate and childlike context. 

 

These small, fit-in-your-pocket wax paintings are like votives; love-letters to the real thing that fit under your pillow. Their size flirts with a promise of ownership, the way children covet their toys. Working on these images also provides insights to the process of not only how the originals were made, but why. 

 

They’re not reproductions of the originals. They’re reproductions of your memory of them.

 

-Chambliss Giobbi