Christopher Pelley
Plum Lime Residency application
Roman Laundry temporary guerrilla installation in Rome combining imagery of antique sculptures and the common generational practice of hanging laundry out the window.
charcoal/ paper, clothes pins, rope, dimensions variable
Greco Roman trash from our consumer based society, those items casually used for momentary pleasure then discarded without further regard were collected and recomposed to generate a conjectural cultural narrative.
found objects, paper take-out cup, wedding cake pillars, scraps of wood 10” x12” x 4”
Auspicious Clouds 祥云 installation view from solo exhibition at Black Space, Shangyuan (Beijing). Referencing stories of austerity told by friends who grew up in Maoist China, I had traditional style building constructed by village craftsmen built in the gallery and sourced a bed and quilt from the period. Numerous paintings of clouds suggesting their unfulfilled dreams and paintings of Maoist clothing lined the walls. Also included (but not visible in the photo) was a propaganda style red banner that translates as “Do Dreams Grow Old and Die?”
Chinese Propaganda Banner temporary guerrilla installation, Beijing. I co-opted the Communist
Party's propaganda red banners to post my own slogans in the countryside. This one translates “Do Dreams Grow Old And Die?”
Long Long Ago In a woods near the village outside of Beijing where I maintained a studio, I hung another one of my usurped propaganda red banners which translates “Long Long Ago”. Nearby I installed a flock of mechanical birds painted a uniform gray, the same color of the village buildings. They flapped pathetically, eternally trapped in their confined space. The coordinates of this location were posted on the Chinese social media platform, WeChat. The references for me were many – from enforced conformity to the 4 pests campaign of 1958 – 1962 where sparrows were hunted to near extinction triggering a devastating famine to more recent issues of environmental degradation which has left the skies above Beijing almost devoid of birds.
Chinese Characteristics #4 painting based on found imagery of the Cultural Revolution combined with passages of gestural abstract paint. Originally painted on separate canvases, they were cut up and reassembled generating a slightly different hierarchy.
oil/canvas 40" x 34"
Rome, 25 January, 2016 on that date, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani met with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi at the Capitoline Museum. In a shocking turn of events (from the Italian perspective) the Museum covered up statues of Venus raising questions of cultural respect to cancel culture.
oil/ canvas 54" x 48"
Larger Piranesi oil/ canvas 60" x 66"
Everything Floats Downstream guerrilla performance/ event. On the banks of the Tibur River, which cuts through Rome, I threw a series of large scale cut outs of distinctly Roman sculptures into the river
and watched them poetically float beneath bridges on their way downstream, memorializing the countless millions of people who have gazed into the river before me.
size variable Capitoline Venus (pictured) 76" x 28"
Pericolo di Crollo (Altemps) antique sculpture in Palazzo Altemps (Rome) drawn on 4 sheets of paper. Some parts of the drawing have been thrown in the street and run over by traffic, other parts collaged with unrelated drawings suggesting decay & continuity.
charcoal/ paper 80” x 56”
Pericolo di Crollo (Hadrian) drawing of a bust of Emperor Hadrian torn, partly thrown under traffic, recomposed with fragments of other drawings.
charcoal/ paper 40" x 28"
Pericolo di Crollo (Commodus) in Italy time is counted in human terms, not an abstract concept.
Rome is eternal and over the centuries and centuries things get damaged and destroyed. They also get repaired, reinterpreted and renovated using materials on hand generating a physical composite of the idea of those centuries and centuries.
charcoal/ paper, found paper 28” x 20”
TRUST temporary guerrilla installation, Union Square, New York City. The word Trust, as written on the dollar bill, was stenciled in ashes in Union Square. Over time its degradation was documented as people blindly walked across it and scattered the ashes.