The Meeting is pleased to exhibit a solo presentation of works by Los Angeles based artist Andrew Chapman.

Chapman’s works in his presentation at Independent have emerged primarily out of a painting practice, though will also include a discrete series of sculptures. The forging of these pieces brings focus to the very core of what drives Chapman’s practice at large: painting coupled with thepreternatural attention to surface and materials, as a provocation of imagined realities that teeter on an uncanny familiarity.

Painterly considerations treat the surface as a thin layer suggestive of some ineffable otherworldliness, phenomenological experience in Chapman’s paintings. His paintings and sculptures have a highly visceral and intuitive relationship to their unknown histories, which are locked within the paint, patina, and grime of said object. Image making–in a sense–is deducing a context of an image from the object. It’s also one that remains a unique physical record unto itself, one that is forensic in nature.

Sitting in the presence of art objects that are not forthright and asking them to enter in a dialogue with us can be unsettling, especially if the objects leave you with more questions than answers. In absence of the ability to speak to us directly, these works reveal their interiors, their narratives, and testimonies to the curious and patient while asking us to sit with them and remain in inquisitive conversation. These objects allow us to engage in a narrative construction as we probe into as well as project onto them. Where did they come from? What iscontained in these images and objects? What’s inside them?

This presentation is a spectrum of works that function like markers of poetic still lifes, each with their own logic and resonant peaks. Chapman invites the viewers to participate as if immersing themselves in an archive, one that is shrouded in enigma and riddle.

text by Chloe English