Soft Shadowsektor garcia, Miko Revereza, and Kamaria Shepherd
September 8 - October 13, 2018

Chen's is pleased to present S​ oft Shadows​, a group exhibition featuring ektor garcia, Miko Revereza, andKamaria Shepherd. The artists/practices in the exhibition present the complexities of ontological survival today
through varying displays of categorical and material transformations.
When you ask what I am, I cannot recall. I am unable to draw the shape of it. Memories permeate membranes ofother memories, entangled in the romance of their own violence. The histories of past lives bleed into my own.
This context gives me form, but I resist the practice of portraiture, let alone Identity. I am home in a loop ofdepartures and spontaneous transformations — something you may call multiplicity. Yet I refuse yourframeworks; color, law, context, understanding. I will retain my shapeless “I”. I am content with that which I havenot become.
Garcia’s untitled sculptural assemblage consists of an array of materials ranging from steel, ceramics, straw,leather, among others; objects that have transformed, grown and traveled with the artist over different periods oftime. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, garcia will make unscheduled changes to the work. As apoetically unpredictable accumulation of gesture and material transformation, the sculpture is precisely
boundaryless and incomplete.
Shepherd’s “Ha Recollection Bust” is a drawing on printed fabric consisting of a poem written by the artist
framed within a line figuration of a human torso. The text navigates a narrative around home, family and stories
involving adolescent change and turmoil. Through text and drawing, Shepherd creates fluid framing methodsand layers that express how subjective histories are built, deconstructed and reassembled.
Split between three monitors, Revereza presents excerpts from his larger project “No Data Plan” whichdocuments his train travel across the United States, from Los Angeles to New York. The piece records thebanality of travel​—​ its hypnotic stretching of time and emotion​—​ while also illuminating the legal and social
demarcations of geography, bodies, and memory. During the film, Revereza’s train is stopped by border patrol
but is eventually allowed to depart without physical or legal harm to Revereza, who is an undocumented
immigrant. “No Data Plan” creates a portrait of precarious life as an invisible drift through a landscape ofspellbinding beauty and political violence.

ektor garcia (​ b. 1985 California, USA) went to school in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, but learned themost from friends, travel, hard work, and from the queers.
Miko Revereza (​ b. 1988 Manila, Philippines) is an experimental filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Throughout hischildhood up to present day, Miko resides as an undocumented immigrant in America. His work has screened infestivals such as International Film Festival Rotterdam, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen andYamagata International Documentary Film Festival. He is currently an MFA candidate at Bard College.
Kamaria Shepherd (​ b. 1991 Houston, USA) is a Los Angeles based painter and has exhibited nationally andinternationally at New Release Gallery in New York, New York; Human Resources in Los Angeles, CA; SoCal MFA
Juried Exhibition at the Millard Sheets Art Center in Pomona, CA; Black Light at the Otis Graduate Studios in Los
Angeles, CA; Palazzetto Cenci at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Rome, Italy; and Circolo Degli Artisti inRome, Italy. Kamaria earned a M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from UCLA (2018) and a B.F.A. in Painting fromRISD (2015). She is the 2018 UCLA recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship.

Chen’s would like to acknowledge and thank Motel, Milton Melvin Croissant III, and Bureau for their assistancewith this exhibition.