THE MYSTERY SPOT

The Mystery Spot

Alexis de Chaunac
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February 28 – April 4
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 28, 1:00–3:00 pm

The Mystery Spot is a site-responsive exhibition rooted in the Okanagan landscape, where orchards, agriculture, and seasonal labor shape both economy and perception. As one of Canada’s largest apple-producing regions, the Okanagan becomes not only a backdrop but a conceptual lens: the apple appears as symbol, material memory, and recurring formal structure. Works on paper rendered in ink and acrylic depict abstracted apples, cut, doubled, hollowed, hovering between figuration and geometry.
 
Through repetition, the apple becomes a rhythmic device, a vessel that opens interior and exterior space. Pigment settles into porous surfaces, retaining traces of touch and process, allowing the familiar to be seen anew.
 
Two projected videos extend this inquiry. One reworks the opening scene of Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s Earth, slicing and looping the image of an old man resting on a bed of apples as his community gathers. This scene is reenacted in the gallery space: a communal apple bed illuminated by two car headlights. A second projection, live- streamed from the bed of apples inside the gallery, introduces another body at rest, linking land, memory, and ritual.
 
Together, the exhibition unfolds as a constellation where the quotidian drifts into the poetic, and the “mystery spot” emerges through subtle shifts in perception.
-           Alexis de Chaunac

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Alexis de Chaunac is a Chicago-based artist whose work explores spirituality, material histories, and the poetic potential of everyday surfaces. His practice is grounded in a sustained attention to the tactile and symbolic life of objects. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his BA from Sarah Lawrence College. He is the recipient of the Dedalus Foundation Fellowship and a Fundación Jumex grant. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, with projects at Galleria Ramo in Como, Italy, Sargent’s Daughters in New York, and the Carrillo Gil Art Museum in Mexico City. His work has been reviewed in Whitewall Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, and Artsy Editorial. De Chaunac is currently a faculty member at SAIC and was a BOLT resident at the Chicago Artists Coalition, where he recently presented a solo exhibition.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Mystery Spot Mural made in collaboration with Nancy Wilde of Wilde Signs
Apple bed and bin installations made in collaboration with artist Byron Johnston 
Car light installation made in collaboration with artist Paul Lewendon 

Special thank yous to: Sumeet Gill and Farming Karma, Kelowna for the supply of the Ambrosia apples that line the bed; to Connor at OPT for the supplying the turf; and to Bob McCoubrey for the bed structure, apple bin and orchard ladders, alongside their construction; and to Kathy Hale for installing the paper works.