The mechanism of a slow churning wheel is the force at hand in Mitchell Kehe’s first exhibition at the gallery titled “The wheel turns.”
In its less consciously organized form the wheel is seen here rotating in place, not propelling forward but recycling, mutating, reorganizing. At times it shapeshifts into a porous and metallic organ or entity, having recently been subject to extrusion, or with recognizable shafts, revolving on an anomalous axle bearing. The lines that bind recall acts of seepage and emergence, something semi-broken and unwell.
Queered, muddied, and biomorphic, the wheel quivers, making way for its own unique identity and subjectivity.
Interacting with an environment is beyond a neutral enterprise. Potential is afforded by certain phenomena, perhaps those that have been pushed away or disavowed, less identifiable on the surface. What’s being picked up and put down is a means of describing a certain kind of contamination or disorganization. The wheel then, is not only shaped by its work, but shapes the work that it does.