Troy Chew: Yadadamean

October 17 - December 12, 2020


View Works

Schedule Visit

Artist Conversation with Troy Chew - Weds, Dec 2, 6 PM


CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions is pleased to announce Yadadamean, a solo exhibition of oil paintings by artist Troy Chew. The show is on view from October 17 to December 12, 2020 and an artist reception with timed entry will be held on October 17 from 2 to 6 p.m. Yadadamean marks Chew’s first solo exhibition with the gallery.

Chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream and Coca Cola presented together on a tabletop easily recalls a setup for celebration. Troy Chew’s portrayal of this assortment of delicacies, titled Yay Area, however, is a coded play on the lexicon of Hip Hop, slang terminology and Bay Area culture. Chew arranges the objects akin to scenes in Flemish still life paintings. By repurposing everyday items from the African Diaspora into fine art compositions, Chew’s paintings embody a smooth detachment from European painting traditions.

Yadadamean is a continuation of Chew’s Slanguage series—a reference to the colloquial speech rooted in Black linguistics. Yadadamean, a more efficient term for, “You know what I mean?” presents an assortment of terms and imagery born in the ‘Yay Area’, or Bay Area for the non-locals’ iteration. Chew’s still lifes provoke viewers to reflect on the historical exclusion of Blackness in Western art, despite the multitudinous facets of Black culture that have shaped mainstream aesthetics, culture and vernacular. The works recall the genesis and evolution of Hip Hop—created in the 1970s in South Bronx by youth who were excluded from the mainstream, it was a rebuttal to a system of social and economic inequality. Hip Hop, and countless other forms of Black creation, existed as incubation spaces for the sharing of stories and forming of Black communities.

Chew regroups the nuance of Black expression from Hip Hop, specifically Bay Area Hip Hop, and investigates the language used to speak about money, cars, women and drugs. Before mainstream acceptance, slang and weed were linked to the Black community as means of vilification and typecasting. Chew incorporates this slang, often criticized as ‘broken English,’ into his paintings through short and sometimes nondescript titles. By combining “high’' brow composition with pop culture imagery—such as broccoli, a basketball, Girl Scout Cookies and Yeezys—Chew elevates and embraces these everyday objects and works to reverse the stereotypes associated with them.

In Yay Area, an assemblage of party novelties is strewn on a reflective glass surface. In Ghost Rider, another assortment rests on asphalt. These surfaces parallel the ones found in Flemish still lifes, where tabletops existed as scenes of performance—themes of excess, gluttony, carnage and feasting commingled here with heaps of a timeless dietary temptation, bread. This trope is expanded in Ball Street Journal where loaves of bread lie next to cabbage, basketballs and paper.

Flemish still lifes were also replete with memento mori—reminders of death and decay. Likewise, Chew’s paintings allude to the mortality of language. The originators of Hip Hop developed a specific language to communicate shared experiences amongst others in their community. Language formed nurturing spaces; slang repurposed bread as the hustle for money while to outsiders bread remained a mealtime accessory. Yaddamean challenges this ongoing erasure—the proliferation and sometimes co-opting of language—with skillful iconography that recreates a safe space for language and culture.

Troy Chew is a California born and raised artist whose work explores the African Diaspora within urban culture. Recent solo exhibitions include Cushion Works and Guerrero Gallery in San Francisco and Parker Gallery, Los Angeles. Recent group exhibitions include California Winter, organized in collaboration with Hannah Hoffman at Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles; Vanguard Revisited at San Francisco Art Institute; and Black Now(here), which exhibited at the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco and Good Mother Gallery, Oakland. Chew was a Graduate Fellow Artist in Residence at the Headlands in 2018 and the Tournesol Award winner in 2019-2020. He has a Bachelor’s in Psychology from the University of California, Merced and a Master of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts - San Francisco. Chew lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Press

Metal Magazine - Black Vernacular and the New Flemish Still Life
Frieze Magazine - Troy Chew’s Hip Hop Symbology
Hypebeast: Troy Chew’s Exhibition Highlights Bay Area Culture Through Oil Still Lifes
It’s Nice That: Troy Chew Explores Colloquial Speech Rooted in Black Linguistics
California Home and Design: Troy Chew’s Yadadamean
SFWeekly: Wayne Thiebaud’s Lonely Islands and Yadadamean


Five on it, 2020, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 36 inches
Ball Street Journal, 2020, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48 inches
Ghost Rider, 2020, Oil on Canvas, 24 x 36 inches
Yay Area, 2020, Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches
Sup Bay, 2020, Oil on Panel, 12 x 12 inches
Like tic, tic, 2020, Oil on Panel, 12 x 12 inches
Ask Berner, 2020, Oil on Panel, 12 x 12 inches

Current

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10 Year Anniversary Exhibition
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Past

Terri Loewenthal
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Time is a Tangled Web: Mary Fernando Conrad, Sophronia Cook, Cross Lypka, Tyler Cross, Zhivago Duncan, Jean Isamu Nagai, Rachel Kaye, Ruth Charlotte Kneass at CULT Bureau, Oakland
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Last Light: Luz Carabaño, Sophronia Cook, Cross Lypka, and Aidan Koch
June 23 - August 26, 2023

ECHO ECHO: Rachel Bridges and Ivan Bridges at CULT Bureau, Oakland
March 2 - August 5, 2023

Two Handfuls Of Silver Dust: Rhonda Holberton
April 27 - June 17, 2023

LEGACY: Binta Ayofemi, Adrian L. Burrell, Rachel Bridges, Ivan Bridges, Masako Miki, and Jean Isamu Nagai
January 18 - April 1, 2023

ZHIVAGO DUNCAN: Measuring Consciousness
September 15 - December 10, 2022

CULT Bureau: Gaze Interrupted
September 17 - November 19, 2022

AMY NATHAN: Slipknot Loophole
May 14 - August 26, 2022

Rebekah Goldstein: Welcome Home Stranger
March 19 - May 7, 2022

Sapiens / Stories at CULT Bureau
November 10, 2021 - April 30, 2022

Physics & Fiction
January 20 - March 12, 2022

Chris Fallon: Irresistible Deception
October 15 - December 18, 2021

Sapiens / Stories on 8-Bridges
October 7 - November 3, 2021

Masako Miki: New Mythologies
June 16 - October 12, 2021

Tales of Metamorphosis: Rebekah Goldstein, James Perkins, and Amy Nathan
June 3 - 30, 2021

Janus II - CULT's 7 Year Anniversary Exhibition
April 9 - May 20, 2021

Troy Chew: Yadadamean
October 17 - December 12, 2020

We’re all in this together
August 14 - October 10, 2020

Beyond Words
June 26 - August 29, 2020

Ritual of Succession
January 10 - March 28, 2020

Record of Succession at fused space
January 13 - March 27, 2020

AMY NATHAN: Glyph Slipper
September 13 - December 7, 2019

FEMALE TROUBLE 2
June 28 - August 3, 2019

RUXUE ZHANG
April 20 - June 15, 2019

MASAKO MIKI: Shapeshifters
January 12 - March 23, 2019

JASKO BEGOVIC (SKO HABIBI): HUMAN_E.T.
November 30 - December 14, 2019

REBEKAH GOLDSTEIN: See You On The Flipside
September 8 - November 25, 2018

FEMALE TROUBLE
June 9 - July 28, 2018

TERRI LOEWENTHAL: Psychscapes
March 2 - May 19, 2018

VECINOS
October 27, 2017 - January 20, 2018

RHONDA HOLBERTON: Still Life
January 10 – March 4, 2017

REBEKAH GOLDSTEIN: Release Me
October 21 - December 10, 2016

NO SHOW MUSEUM: Yves Klein, Maria Eichhorn, Daniel Knorr, Etc.
One Night Only: Monday, October 17, 2016

DESIRÉE HOLMAN: Selected Works
September 17 - October 8, 2016

SHE MOONAGE DAYDREAM:
Facundo Argañaraz, Leah Guadagnoli, Desirée Holman, Kara Joslyn, Max Maslansky, Liz Robb, Tamra Seal, Emily Weiner, & Cate White

July 16 - August 20, 2016

PABLO DÁVILA: Ladies & Gentlemen,
We Are Floating In Space

May 13 - July 9, 2016

MASAKO MIKI: Conversations with Fox, Feather, and Ghost
March 4 - April 30, 2016

SUZY POLING: Total Internal Reflection
January 15 - February 27, 2016

DAN GLUIBIZZI: You Don’t Have to be Alone Tonight
November 6 – December 19, 2015

FRANCESCO IGORY DEIANA: Haptic Render
September 11- October 31, 2015

SEXXXITECTURE: Daniel Gerwin, Rebekah Goldstein, Roman Liška, Max Maslansky, May Wilson & Jake Ziemann
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ADAM SORENSEN: In Situ
May 1 - June 27, 2015

KLARA KÄLLSTRÖM & THOBIAS FÄLDT: Village / High Hills
February 27 - April 25, 2015

PRINCE RAMA: How To Live Forever
January 25 – February 21, 2015

JOSEPH DUMBACHER & JOHN DUMBACHER: Divert (Out of Line)
November 7, 2014 – January 16, 2015

REBEKAH GOLDSTEIN: Passenger
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A PATTERN LANGUAGE: Michelle Grabner, Angie Wilson & Lena Wolff
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MICHELLE BLADE: Gathering Into Being
April 25th – June 7th, 2014

MIGUEL ARZABE: /*Reject Algorithms*/
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JACQUELINE KIYOMI GORDON: Drawings
March 7 – April 19, 2014

FRITZ CHESNUT: Purr Valley
& Rhonda Holberton

January 10 - February 22, 2014

UNSEEN: Miya Ando, Miguel Arzabe, Chris Duncan, Klea Mckenna & Dean Smith
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Past Off-Site Exhibitions

RHONDA HOLBERTON: Still Life 2
April 7 - May 26, 2018

LAS COSAS QUE PINTAN / PAINTING IN AN EXPANSIVE FIELD
Works by Miguel Arzabe & Juan Sorrentino

April 9 – May 17, 2015

EBB: Gina Borg and Chris Russell at Loczi Design
December 10, 2014