Berlin
2024
Showed at Deye Chen Gen Chyen Axel Void solo exhibition, Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin.
Chess offers a compelling metaphor for this process. Each piece has a specific role and function, moves in a defined way, and holds a particular place in the hierarchy. Traditional chess simplifies the world into a black-and-white fantasy, where color determines friend or foe.
In our version of chess, we reject this rigid order. There is no king or queen—only pawns arranged in a circle, ensuring everyone is equally positioned on the board. There are no enemies to capture, only free movement. Some might find this setup absurd, but perhaps that’s the point. This absurdity can help us imagine different ways of being in the world and of forming relationships. The mark making over the board becomes a harmonic drawing, scars or memories over the surface dancing against each other. Wandering as an end.
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Your mom used to tell you that you stopped believing in God when you started playing chess. You enjoy this idea because you love chess; it feels very close to your thinking—calculated and creative. The chess you love is a dance, a beautiful drawing between forces. The joy is playing beautifully—even if you lose—winning poorly is no fun. The joy is also in the situation, whether it is teaching someone, playing with someone you find attractive, playing with someone you can’t communicate with verbally, or knowing you are making a good new friend. However, you remember when you first questioned religion. It was when you met a Christian missionary priest that.Your mom befriended when you were a kid. The priest was an alcoholic; your mom softened it by saying that they were sometimes drinky-way. Being drinky-way. To your mom was Normal or not too bad. Only that the priest was drinky-way a bit too often. You think of everyone around you that had been drinky-way. You begin to question alcohol and religion at the same time.
You play chess for the first time in your Uncle’s house. A small town on a small street, a tiny front yard with a dry rosebush, a friendly adopted dog, the walls were full of books, a fireplace, and a record player near an extensive collection of jazz and 70s rock records. Your dad and your Uncle teach you how to move the pieces. Unlike the others, they both drink but never get drinky-way. Your Uncle liked his whiskey in a glass tube filled to the top with a single ice cube. Your dad preferred rum in a glass, also with a single cube. They would never lose their balance or composter; they could drive perfectly and maintain a fluent conversation. However, their intensity would change. Your Uncle dies of a heart attack, and your dad dies of liver failure.
On the other side of the family, there is a beautiful photo your grandfather took. Three of your uncles are in this black-and-white image; the youngest and the oldest are playing chess while the other watches. The image has an atmospheric analog light to it. Your grandfather used to develop the film himself and took a lot of care in the family pictures.
You played a lot with the younger Uncle. You also like to watch movies together, talk about life, and jam to island Music. He has no kids but is somewhat of a father figure to you. He never got to beat you at chess; he would say one of these days, I’ll get you, although he often flattered your playing and was proud of you. He dies soon after that. He is also an alcoholic, but he took his own life. Your mom found him with a Bible open to the book of Revelations. We often play chess on a chess set gifted to him by his oldest brother—the other kid in the photo. You never got to meet him; he fell off a cliff into the water; the kid watching the game in the photo jumped and swam after him but eventually couldn’t see him. They never found the body. The third Uncle is still around. You never saw him play chess.
You played online most of your life; it calms you down but alienates you. You eventually join a chess club in the neighborhood that raised you. Your teacher is partially blind—charming and altruistic. He teaches for free to people of all ages. You sit in a small room in the community center. A student in their 70s tells you how chess is the joy of her life; her kids are older, and she doesn’t need to take care of them anymore. She is now thinking about chess all the time. She started playing only a year ago but wishes she had discovered it in her early life. She wonders if chess would have changed her decision-making. Your teacher’s wife helped him build a chess set and painted it in bright colors so that he could see better. They have a metal pin on the top of the white pieces to feel the distinction between them. There are holes on each square to which the pieces pin so they don’t fall while feeling them. It looks strange and beautiful. You have played over fruit cartons with vendors in a marketplace in Asia. In ex-Yugoslavia, joining a tournament spontaneously in the central plaza of a small town. In a small bar in a big city where musicians jam while people play. In a small Chess spot with dusty Chess sets on display behind glass and a small area packed with tables in the back, dim lights, and cardboard boxes, where people play every day until late hours. You no longer play online. At least you’re trying not to, but you embrace how your thoughts parallel this game you love.
Playing is essential to your view of the human experience. You carry this value as a virtue, a structure to build experiences over.
You see chess as a game of options, where each move opens up a sometimes infinite amount of moves and closes others. You find beauty in these limitations and the possibilities within them, as in infinite possibilities within a segment or open options within a lifetime. You try hard to keep playing better, only to keep playing and failing more beautifully. And you hope this continues to inform your life as it is one and the same.
Zo