“There is a distinctive urban vibe to Chuck Scalin’s abstract collages
made largely from found ‘trash’ elements, yet they provide
a calm antidote to the chaos of our world...
Scalin’s collages evoke the mood and energy of the city,
the elegant solidity and stability of street and wall
textural fragments made current
and yet made old by dirt, scars, marks, and unintended swaths of color...
While inspired by early modernists, Scalin’s works are timeless,
reflecting the weight, moods, colors and textures of the urban environment.”
(Kolaj Magazine, #25, April 2019,
“Unnoticed Urban Elements: The Terrain of Chuck Scalin” by Diana Thompson Vincelli
An Article by Sam Brantly Taylor, in the Shockoe Artspace newsletter, has just been published.
You can read it HERE.
An excerpt from Sam's article:
An initial glance at any exhibition establishes the sense of scale and spatial “timing”; for COLLAGE, the impression is of a dynamic relationship between the works and the architecture. Each piece is modest in size--the smallest only 3x3 inches within the frame. Even so, the total installation punctuates the perimeter with moments that range from intimate to monumental. One such episode concerns the “broken grid” of photographs stacked high on the gallery wall; this arrangement draws attention both down and up, in terms of space and perceived aesthetic value, by relating the art to the ghostly remnants of the original tiled factory floor.
