It’s a Long Walk Home

Juan Angel Chavez / Michael Genovese / Cody Hudson

Juan Angel Chavez, Michael Genovese, and Cody Hudson have been collaborating as an un-official art crew on the streets of Chicago for years. Different than nighttime shadow skimmers whom seek street credibility by emblazing their names across a city; Chavez, Genovese, and Hudson create sensitive assemblages constructed of found objects.

Each installation is pieced together randomly with no prior plan. Then the artists intuitively create a dialog of objects, deconstructed then reconstructed, inserting text patterns, and organic color fields forming a visual environment that symbiotically exists within the installations site-specific space.

IT’S A LONG WALK HOME is a journey that will start in Chicago and end in Philadelphia at Space 1026. Juan, Michael, and Cody will drive off the beaten path picking up pieces a long the way. A long the road the artist’s will install and document mini installations during their travels, creating a trail marked with their touch. Their goal is to fill their van with enough accumulated material to build individual habitats inside the gallery and then live in them.

Collecting discarded material, once waste in the urban landscape Chavez, Genovese, and Hudson give life to remnants of times past. Weaving new memories out of past purposes; imposing fresh perspectives in vacant spaces. Blank walls that over time have been neglected, ignored backdrops in blighted areas are transformed into beautiful casts of playful energy. Old signage, fragmented information, abandoned mass surrounds an urban landscape. Articles of trash, unable to biodegrade accumulate in mounds, outline the periphery of our vision, and spill out of our habitats; stagnate. As a collective consciousness the artist/creator picks up those pieces, giving life to left over man-made relics.

Interested in assemblage dwellings, a habitat constructed entirely out of found materials, gathered in and around the area of installation became a focus for the artists. Making structures that re-connects the littered objects with a space synthesizing Genovese’s hand written text patterning, Hudson’s emotive shapes and colors, with Chavez’s dimensional layered constructions.