Pech

Micah Schippa-Wildfong
In Another Room I Am Drinking Eggs from a Boot
October 3 – November 16, 2024

Opening: Wednesday, October 2, 6–9pm

“From the first smouldering taper to the elegant lanterns whose light reverberated around eighteenth-century courtyards and from the mild radiance of these lanterns to the unearthly glow of the sodium lamps that line the Belgian motorways, it has all been combustion. Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artefact we create. The making of a fish-hook, manufacture of a china cup, or production of a television programme, all depend on the same process of combustion. Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers. From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night, and the fire still spreads.” (W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn)

In Another Room I Am Drinking Eggs From a Boot is the final and paraphrasal installment in a series of exhibitions that began in June of 2024, including all fish in the night become birds, and Civilization of Happiness. The exhibition, titled after the eponymous poem by Frank Stanford, I consider to be of three sisters, philosophical and exuberant in their self-decimating nature. The work is meant to linger only slightly, on the practice of movement, post-industrial metaphysics, language, and the low glow of air before fading away. 

Micah Schippa-Wildfong is an American artist, writer, and musician living and working in Chicago. They studied formally at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied independently in experimental poetics, philosophy, and contemporary theory. They have recently exhibited at Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, romance, Pittsburgh, and Mickey, Chicago.