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Five Churches in a Strip Mall on Pasadena Avenue presents 'Whittling Chip', a solo exhibition of sculpture by Max Cleary, on view December 5, 2025–February 1, 2026.
Referring to the history of craft, the natural sciences, folklore, and speculative fiction, this new body of work considers how information is inscribed into objects and how a visual language iterates through time. Installed on the walls of the gallery are a series of mosaics composed of pieces of industrial grade graphite framed inside found cabinet drawers. The motifs depicted in the mosaics vary, ranging from church architecture to mechanical diagrams. Set into their deep wooden frames, their shape and size recall reliquaries or miniature shrines, their jigsaw faces evoke puzzle boxes and stained glass.
At once folk and futuristic, their ambiguity as objects reaching across time is dependent on Cleary's choice of material. Graphite is a crystalline form of pure carbon, itself atomically fundamental…
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Press Release
Five Churches in a Strip Mall on Pasadena Avenue presents 'Whittling Chip', a solo exhibition of sculpture by Max Cleary, on view December 5, 2025–February 1, 2026.
Referring to the history of craft, the natural sciences, folklore, and speculative fiction, this new body of work considers how information is inscribed into objects and how a visual language iterates through time. Installed on the walls of the gallery are a series of mosaics composed of pieces of industrial grade graphite framed inside found cabinet drawers. The motifs depicted in the mosaics vary, ranging from church architecture to mechanical diagrams. Set into their deep wooden frames, their shape and size recall reliquaries or miniature shrines, their jigsaw faces evoke puzzle boxes and stained glass.
At once folk and futuristic, their ambiguity as objects reaching across time is dependent on Cleary's choice of material. Graphite is a crystalline form of pure carbon, itself atomically fundamental…
