Stranger review of “Chess: The Game of Life”
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“Chess: The Game of Life”
Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago, and from primordial oceans, life birthed. 250 million years ago, the Pangaea continent enclosed an ocean that covered parts of Asia, including the Himalayan region. The Himalayan Mountains formed 50 million years ago, displacing ocean and trapping mineral rich waters in its caverns. The waters eventually evaporated and minerals crystallized over time, forming halite, or rock salt.
2,000 years ago, trade routes were developed to access the salt, as a result of its desirability and importance to far-ranging communities. These connections cross-fertilized cultures, propagating and evolving ideas. Among the traveling ideas of cultures were games—a formalized play reflecting beliefs and behaviors of a culture. Through these land passages, the evolution of Chess began around 1500 years ago, reaching from India and China, Westward to the European region, ultimately embodying Eastern and Western philosophy.
In this lineage, the Chinese I Ching philosophy and the game of Chess share structures. The I Ching is composed of sixty-four Hexagrams, each of six lines formed in the combination of two basic symbols of polarity, Yin and Yang. All states of change are symbolized in the 64 combinations of Yin and Yang forces. Thus, with Chess’s board of sixty-four squares, positioned with six kinds of pieces, separated as two forces, the movements of each game correspond to life processes.
Each game of Chess is a reflection of the players. Thus, Chess remains a crux of inquiry, as the subject of artists, philosophers, psychologists, and mathematicians. Marcel Duchamp thought of Chess as a language, saying that “chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts…expressing their beauty abstractly, like a poem”. Duchamp further stated that Chess is art. To this, while movements of pieces shape thoughts, their expressions form on the foundation of actual materials and forms.
The Knight gallops, then surprises. The Queen stands tall and reigns over the board. The dressed Bishop sees adjacent to the utilitarian Rook, and together they scheme for control of the board, at flank and shoulder’s side. The King orchestrates the game. And altogether, simple pawns front strategy, edging towards opposition’s territory for promotion, and for sacrifice. Sometimes formed of stone, ivory, wood, metal, glass, or plastic, the chess pieces’ composition is metaphoric, of human psychology and physical relationship to life on Earth.
”Chess: The Game of Life” is a microcosm combining the human touch with melting ice pieces and an eroding rock salt board to reflect the nature of interaction. Set into a circular table to signify the heavens, the board’s 64 squares of crystallized minerals slowly erode to the ebb and flow of each match, imprinting patterns of play much as rivers and oceans shape the Earth.
Chris Walsh
Performances occur every Wednesday 12:34pm at Cornish Main Campus Gallery through October 19
Sculpture+Performance by Chris Walsh
Videography by Karina Lorraine Nyquist
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