On the concrete floor, a key chain tells a story about its owner: There’s the key that starts the Jeep, a dangling canister of Mace for protection, a Budweiser bottle opener, a cowboy boot charm and a trinket that spells out “LOVE IS LOVE.”
Only, this key chain at the Dallas Contemporary is massive — 10 feet wide — and constructed of foam, wood, steel, fiberglass, resin, rope, acrylic and oil. The title of the artwork says it all: Oh, The Places You’ll Go.
Indeed, the creations of artist Chloe Chiasson take us on a journey. We revisit the iconography of her small-town Texas childhood, but reimagined. Look closely and the “cowboys” here are gender-nonconforming. There are pickups and Main Street storefronts and breezy backyards — all rendered as multidimensional works that are part painting, part sculpture. Some of them literally pop out from the wall to command your attention.
The crafted image of a rainy side-view mirror with a heart traced on the glass by an imaginary finger reminds us that objects are “closer than they appear.”
This is an homage to rural living as gritty and lonely as many of us experienced firsthand, but refashioned into a world where everything is possible and differences are celebrated.
Chiasson was born in Port Neches in southeast Texas and studied at the University of Texas at Austin. She got her Master of Fine Arts at the New York Academy of Art and is based in Brooklyn. “Keep Left at the Fork” is her largest body of mixed-media paintings yet and her first museum exhibition.
It’s also an exhibition layered with queer themes at a time when LGBTQ rights have again become a flashpoint in the South. The show “reimagines Texas as an utopian state where queer people feel seen and safe,” says its Dallas curator, Emily Edwards.
Yes, Chiasson has crafted an idealized destination for the viewer, a dusty, dream-pop town equal parts grit and glamour.
