Chen Chen & Kai Williams

Aug 23

Written By Admin

DOOMSDAYERS

Williams takes samples of our natural world and present them as conserved specimens. Set like gemstones to be maintained for a mineral-stripped future, their Geology and Transition series have an artifactual air as though they will soon be no longer. In their twelve years together, Chen and Williams have maintained a straightfor- ward “do with what you have” type of approach. Valuing the transformative abilities of both natural and industrial materials has been a huge part of their ongoing investigation as makers. Within the context of shifting material values in a planet subject to continued depletion of natural resources and rare earth elements, their output seems cleverly ad hoc. In the past they’ve cast aluminum into water, zinc onto glass, and turned used plastic shopping bags into a form-giving material. Chen and Williams’s work is inventive yet direct.

Absent of any pretense, their descriptions are written as a play by play of how the thing was made. Fundamental information remains open-source. This spirit is confirmed by the Archive section of their website, which is set up as a convincing dupe of Wikipedia—the history of each piece, its process, its material DNA all there with the click of a hyperlink. Their practice- as-data advances perhaps arbitrary but mesmerizing knowledge, setting their work up to be recovered no matter what the future holds.

B. 1985, Shanghai, China; B. 1984, New York, NY
Live and work in Brooklyn, NY

cckw.us
@chenandkai