Building
Nave
To supplement the fragment
The Apple Stretching
Dog Eared Reverie
Storefront
Local Objects
Framework
I used to be a tree
Nave
in lieu gallery
Los Angeles, CA
February 24 – March 30, 2024
Los Angeles, CA
February 24 – March 30, 2024
APC
T-shirt, found shirt, found shoe heel, steel, paint, rust, stitching
15.375 x 21 x 11.625 inches
The painted metal structure here has moments where under layers of paint appear. I love when the ironwork of the city shows evidence of the passage of time and different aesthetic decisions. A lot of my own decisions in these works are guided by an idea of function. I find the mesh here beautiful but it also protects the heal inside. It’s the way a homeowner might do it. Doing things like this connects me with the way things are done elsewhere, outside of art. Much like working within the lineage of art, there’s a lineage of quick fixes, intuitive solution, which shows an urgency not dissimilar to art.
PRS
Found shirt, found shoe heel, steel, silver brazing, stitching
20 x 15.25 x 6 inches
I first noted this fabric thing stuck high up in razor wire in Brooklyn last June. For the next 6 months I would pass it often, knowing I’d get it when it was ready, when I was ready for it. I like knowing there are seemingly insignificant things out there that might have a thought attached to them.
The burst form is sunbleaching from where it was caught in the fence. I’m particularly excited about how it’s attached to the metal structure: a steel rod pierces a native seam of the shirt at the top and bottom. Beneath the shirt is a metal design taken from a building facade in Rome, a lost shoe heel in place for the “empty niche” in Rome.
L_B
T-shirt, found shoe heel, inkjet fabric prints, steel, silver brazing, stitching
21.25 x 18.875 x 7.25 inches
The surface of this piece is made entirely from one sunfaded black t-shirt. The work is very confessional to me: an opening in the center that appears pitch black draws you in. Inside is a lost/found shoe heel. The opening makes me want to whisper something inside. Two niches flank that central interior space, the tops of which are the shoulders of the shirt. Inside each niche are two facing images depicting what I see as an intimate space in Queens where I live: the light from one window spilling onto its neighboring building. Feels like a whisper from mouth to ear.
EBS
T-shirt, found shirt, found shoe heel, steel, rust, found construction cloth, cloth grocery bag, laser prints, other found material
16.125 x 21 x 10 inches
This piece is made entirely of/from my surroundings. Like the rust on the steel bars, the sculpture’s materials carry the conditions where they were found. The side awnings are made from a thrashed striped shirt I found in the train tracks by my studio. The top is a brittle red t-shirt found in the california desert. It feels good to hand wash this material in the studio and give it form/function. The black underbelly is a fresh cloth reusable grocery bag and found construction fencing. Try zooming in to see the metal wire twists that hold the black material to the structure. Mysterious faces float about. Pieces of found mesh fill in the holes. All guarding, protecting, a hidden platform heel inside.
R_G
T-shirt, found shoe heel, steel, paint, stitching
15.5 x 19.625 x 9.5 inches
I think a lot about exteriority vs. interiority in sculpture, physically and conceptually. Interiority equates to shelter and protection. Exteriority is our connection to the world. Awnings exemplify both. These sculptures are protective yet vulnerable, and their materials have moved from one stage to another. The interior space of this piece feels voluminous and comforting with it’s warm yellow glow. When I was a kid, I remember looking inside my shirt and imagining inhabiting that space as some sort of method of escape.
JMZ
T-shirt, found shoe heel, inkjet fabric prints, steel, silver brazing, stitching
13.75 x 21 x 5.25 inches
This piece has retractable curtains. When they’re open, you see a metal design derived from a common yet overlooked detail of nyc. When they’re closed, an image comes together to suggest the origins of that design. After making the piece I realized all of its materials come from “New” places, New York, New Mexico, New Orleans. Interesting linguistic twist to a work thats so much about age.
MSG
T-shirt, found shoe heel, found cotton cloth, corrugated plastic, laser prints, tape, steel, brass, silver brazing, stitching
20 x 17.75 x 7 inches
I wanted to return to a basic awning form here to create the correct conditions for this confessional window. I made the piece to hang next to a window, knowing natural light that would enter the work, from one window into another. I began thinking about this light in Rome recently, seeing the way the churches used light as material in sculpture.
It’s interesting for me to give a material different functions. The metal rods here are both the utilitarian structure, as well as decorative, in the window. Also, the images beneath the plastic are “images” in the artwork, but also have a function of blocking the view of the interior and heel inside.
Within his care, as with the workmanship of a special tailor or cobbler, Carideo’s sensibility is a deft hand that mends the broken and remakes the otherwise forgotten. He preserves rips and tears of weathered t-shirts so as to highlight the fabric, now sheer and threadbare. He centers the broken heel, lost and found, to present its special form. Each discoloration alludes to an unseen story of use or misuse; together, as a palette of weathered shades, the work is an homage to the castoffs and fragments of life’s experiences.
Some of Carideo’s newest welded designs resemble wall facades from European towns, or perhaps, the bottom tread of a new boot. The heel shape that reappears, and that the artist celebrates, is also the shape of a true Roman arch or portico. A fascination regarding the possibility of image and form allows each artwork to reimagine the criteria of function, use, adornment, and ornament. With visual serendipity, these offerings elaborate on form as function, and propose the ornament. With visual serendipity, these offerings elaborate on form as function, and propose the idea we can make everything out of anything and anything out of everything.
A canopy, shade, or awning is actually an impossibly simple and universal gesture that offers protection from the physical elements. Yet, as with so many things, bare-bones pragmatics can only sustain for so long, and practicality must give way to the tender and mysterious.
Look down, look up, and bear witness to the ravages and splendor of life– take refuge in the possibility of beauty as shelter, an elegy for a disappearing world.
- Candice Chu