Albertz Benda
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Home
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • Art Fairs
  • News
  • Press
  • Publications
  • Contact
Menu
  • Current
  • Upcoming
  • Past

Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns

Past exhibition
May 19 - June 25, 2022 New York
  • Installation Views
  • Works
  • Video
  • Press release
  • Press
Installation Views
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller
  • Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller 
  • Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller 
  • Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller 
  • Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller 
  • Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller 
  • Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller 
Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller 
Works
  • Chloe Chiasson, Blind Spots, 2022
    Chloe Chiasson, Blind Spots, 2022
  • Chloe Chiasson, The Renegades, 2022
    Chloe Chiasson, The Renegades, 2022
  • Chloe Chiasson, 7 Minutes in Heaven, 2022
    Chloe Chiasson, 7 Minutes in Heaven, 2022
  • Chloe Chiasson, Shallow Be Thy Game, 2022
    Chloe Chiasson, Shallow Be Thy Game, 2022
  • Chloe Chiasson, Sunday Confessions, 2022
    Chloe Chiasson, Sunday Confessions, 2022
  • Chloe Chiasson, The Eyes of Texas, 2022
    Chloe Chiasson, The Eyes of Texas, 2022
Video
Press release

NEW YORK, NY | albertz benda is thrilled to announce the first New York solo show of the Brooklyn-based artist Chloe Chiasson, on view from May 19 – June 25, 2022. Chiasson will present the largest body of her mixed media paintings to date, featuring monumental groupings of queer figures in domestic and social settings.   

 

Chiasson’s work highlights queer life and visibility. Drawing upon a repressive history, the works in Fast Hearts and Slow Towns authentically represent queer narratives still unfolding around us today. Her large-scale worlds provide an intimate view into a radical history, a personal lifetime, and even just a single evening. These private spaces come into view in a monumental fashion with the biggest secrets occupying the most space: life-sized snapshots of missed moments in a photo booth, a pair of massive hands, fingernails bitten down, reaching out towards one another. Permeated by a coexisting sense of anxiety and comfort, these works are a testament to queer experience. 

 

 Finding harmony in opposition, Chiasson unifies ideals which we have been conditioned to see as conflicting. Her process combines painting and carpentry in defiance of traditional distinctions between fine art and craft. She masterfully collages together images from different periods, finding an unexpected resonance within these disparate moments: tattooed lesbians with cross earrings smoking cigarettes and drinking Shiner beer, rosaries hanging from their rearview mirrors parked on the sandy plane of a local beach.  

 

 Historically, gay bars were a place of safety and belonging as well as an escape from persecution. But, in the wide-open spaces of the South, these escapes could be anything from a back room to a back road—and they remain to hold the weight of the community on their shoulders today. In Chiasson’s work, we are convinced that southeast Texas’ version of the Stonewall Inn may very well be the shotgun side of an old pick-up truck. Intimately tied to their inhabitants, these scenes marry the grand and mundane as the ordinary is transformed and claimed as queer space. Spaces where you can look across the bar or room and know the collective heart of those around you, and what it took for them to get there.  

 

 In Fast Hearts and Slow Towns, Chiasson shines a light on radical love and acceptance, the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances, resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning that constitute queerness itself, and she does so with without a shred of forgiveness.

Press
  • Chloe Chiasson, "The Eyes of Texas" (2022), oil, foam, canvas on shaped panel. Photo by Thomas Mueller

    7 Artists on the Resilience of Depicting Queer Intimacy in Public

    Osman Can Yerebakan, Artsy, June 13, 2022
  • Chloe Chiasson, "Shallow By Thy Game" (2022), oil, acrylic, resin, wire, canvas on shaped panel. Photo by Thomas Mueller

    What Does Southern Queerness Look Like?

    Elaine Velie, Hyperallergic, June 13, 2022
  • “Sunday Confessions” (2022) by Chloe Chiasson. Photography by Thomas Mueller

    A Monumental Photobooth That Captures Queer Intimacy

    Ryan Waddoups, Surface Magazine, May 31, 2022
  • Chloe Chiasson: Fast Hearts and Slow Towns. May 19, 2022 - June 25, 2022. albertz benda, NY. Photo: Thomas Mueller.

    Albertz Benda Opens the First New York Solo Show of the Brooklyn-based Artist Chloe Chiasson

    ArtDaily, May 23, 2022

Related artist

  • Chloe Chiasson

    Chloe Chiasson

Back to Past exhibitions
Manage cookies
© Albertz Benda
Site by Artlogic
Facebook, opens in a new tab.
Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Join the mailing list

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences