Kiah Celeste
Chaos! Is Restored
February 23 – April 13, 2024
Viewable from the front window at all hours, seven days a week.
“Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restored;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal darkness buries all.”
— Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
Upon the third day of install of Chaos! Is Restored, connecting tube after tube from wall to opposite wall in careful symmetry, muscles sore from stretching three feet to ten, Kiah Celeste connects the fiftieth of fifty-four tubes to complete the repetitive, pristine decline of an aesthetically minimalistic work before tension intervenes. Each latex tube microscopically delves into decay - but not before the wall does.
When viewing Chaos! Is Restored, the process of transition is intensely evident. The Greek root of entropy translates to “a turning towards transformation” — with that transformation being chaos. The pressure and tension built by stressing the latex molecules accelerated a transformation that could have taken months, into one fell swoop.
By way of this instant shift reveals another course of entropy; the exposed brick, crumbling muted pink plaster and a shoddy wood frame which rested in gradual degradation behind the intervention of a fifteen-year-old mask of white drywall, time exposes its vandalism physically and historically.
Some creations are made in disregard of inevitable disorder, others in spite of it, and others still in acceptance and embrace. Celeste is not denying the passage of eternity, but is enveloped by it in celebration.
Kiah Celeste (b. 1994, Brooklyn, NY) lives and works in Louisville, KY. In 2016 she received a BFA in photography from the State University of New York at Purchase. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Speed Museum, Louisville, KY (2023); DOCUMENT, Lisbon, Portugal (2023); Swivel Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2023); DOCUMENT, Chicago, IL (2022); KMAC Museum, Louisville, KY (2021); University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington, KY (2021); Centre d’Art La Rectoria, Sant Pere De Vilamajor, Barcelona, Spain (2020); and Dadapost, Berlin, Germany (2020). Celeste’s work lives in numerous private collections and was recently gifted to the Speed Museum in Louisville.