LOS ANGELES — On the sly, Chloë Bass turns her viewers into poets. The multiform artist quietly coaxes us to see the world as a means to look inward. It’s as if her work is both a mirror and a magnifying glass, a foreign object that suddenly reveals part of yourself. At present, Bass has two concurrent shows in LA — at the Skirball Center and Art + Practice, the latter of which will evolve into a permanent installation, commissioned by the California African American Museum, later this year.
The Skirball show, titled Wayfinding, features five themed sections of 30-plus different styles of signage throughout the Skirball’s outdoor campus. Each sign poses a text that quietly pokes at the truths you’ve hidden from yourself or features an image of bodies touching that stirs up a sense of tenderness. For this show, its final stop after a multi-year national tour, Bass added the fifth site-specific section as well as an accompanying audio work.
Originally shared on Instagram, #sky #nofilter: Hindsight for a Future America, at A+P, is a multimedia exploration of selected texts alongside shots of clear blue skies leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Bass explains the project as “the translation from photos/texts/lecture/performance script/chapbook to physical artworks, including a permanent sculpture.” These selections will eventually become CAAM’s permanent public installation of 16 arranged glass panels representing the photos, with nearly undetectable hairline engravings, only evidenced by the shadow of text they cast on the ground.
