CHYRUM LAMBERT :: Electric & Infinite Body: An Alphabet Of Looking

Press Release

la BEAST gallery is proud to present ’Electric & Infinite Body: An Alphabet Of Looking’. In this showcase, artist and poet Chyrum Lambert eagerly explores the notion that human perception is anchored in the practice of categorizing the world, rendering understanding into smaller and smaller chucks. In his singularly unique way, Lambert emphasizes this idea by building an elaborate dictionary, visual in nature, that pushes the boundaries of language as we know it.

’Electric & Infinite Body: An Alphabet Of Looking’ opens with a reception on Saturday, April 27th, from 6-9 pm at la BEAST gallery in Cypress Park.

About the Exhibition

Is it Flora? Is it Fauna? Is it outer space? Is it Lava? So many things come to mind when exploring the depths of Lambert’s nebulous landscapes. Lambert says, “These forms resemble arthropods or stones or creeping vines to fog and smoke to decay and growth, of all or anything that lives and dies”. Without much context, it is easy to fall into ponderous paralysis, staring deep into an abyss of unstable textures. Despite the complexity, what becomes quickly apparent is that many of Lambert’s dramatic arrangements are peppered with square-like grids, creating moments of separation from the overall composition. The effect is clear. What was once wild has the ability to be captured and contained. 

But why create chaos just to restrain it? Encountering commotion, filtering its essence, and creating a system out of its parts, is of course, undeniably human. We strive to make sense of the world, the expanse, the vibrations of nature. But it’s all so big; so incomprehensible. So what do we do? Well…we break it down, chunk it out, and hope beyond hope, that meaning can be derived. Lambert writes, “It's like a completely impossible idea: wanting to take what we see and narrow it down to basic, simple constituents. And then, well, what do you do with that?” 

Lambert’s message is unmistakable. The alphabet as we know it, is a very strange idea indeed. Whether it be the ABC’s, the one-two-threes, or the orders of magnitude of the periodic table, as a world of people, we invent ways to render our surroundings into nuggets of digestible understanding. Somehow, through trial and error, systems have been built, speech has flowed, and symbols have become entrenched. This process never stops. Lambert, it seems, is making his own distinct contribution, adding to the ever-changing lexicon. Lambert states, “It can work in different ways. If you can pull from things to make an alphabet, then you can use that alphabet to construct the sentence in a new way. There’s no real, practical way of doing it. But I think language is a totally absurd thing already!”

It’s impossible to gaze on Lambert’s work and feel underwhelmed. His paintings are dense, teeming with organic life, fluttering in place. Yet, Lambert has introduced more than just the theory of growth. Through the use of a mysterious data set, he acknowledges his position as inventor; the author of specialized knowledge. As perplexing as it all is, an irrefutable feeling of satisfaction washes over those who look. To witness an act, in the midst of creation, is a gift in and of itself. 

“It looks like it could be a claw. But it also looks like a knife on a soft pillow. It could be a number of things. And the thing is, it has to stay kind of strange and vague because that's the way letters work too…in an alphabet. If I just look at a Q, I'm like, ‘I don't really know what I'm looking at here.’ But when I look at it in a sentence, it makes a lot of sense.” —Chyrum Lambert