Paul Chatem: Art Made Mobile

In an art museum you see pieces you hate, pieces that you love and some that you are indifferent toward, then you move on to the next piece. The experience is one dimensional and honestly it can be boring unless you’re looking for a specific artist that you admire. If you already know that you like something, it takes away from the experience of discovering it and experiencing it. Really, there’s only so much to experience if all you can do is look.

Paul Chatem’s art doesn’t only speak to viewers, it draws them in and moves with the viewer. Chatem’s latest pieces contain clockwork. He’s a woodworker and an artist. Viewers become part of the art by moving a lever or  turning a gear that makes the art move. His characters and stories come to life by using your hands. 

“I wanted to do something that drew people in and made them want to spend time in front of my work,” Chatem said in Creep Machine, an art blog.

Comic books influence his work. That inspiration is seen through his use of distinct, clean lines and the use of storytelling? and narrative in his pieces. He is also inspired by vintage advertising and animation. Both are immediately recognized through the characters in his art.

The characters in each story are important to Chatem. They perpetuate the story that he wants the viewer to understand. He specifically chooses human characters so his audience has something to relate to in his art.

“Storytelling is an important part of my art. To communicate my ideas to the viewers, they need to relate to what they are seeing. Using human figures or humanesque animals, the viewer gets drawn into a world that seems familiar to them. This creates an opening for me to get my ideas across no matter how obscure they might be,” Chatem said in Juxtapoz Magazine.

Chatem was born in Bellevue, Wash., but grew up in La Crescenta, Calif., the outskirts of Los Angeles. He got his bachelor’s degree from Kansas City Art Institute. After receiving that degree, he showed his art in coffee shops and art shows in Los Angeles. 

The difference between the rich and the poor is the main theme in all of his works. People are looking for something to help them escape. In his art, there is no representation of that escape because it can’t be found. The escape doesn’t exist, the nightmarish theme is something he saw first-hand living in La Crescenta with its relation to Los Angeles.

“I intentionally didn’t include an icon representing the desires of these characters. They desire an escape from the world they live in, and there really isn’t one, beyond dying or- more metaphorically I guess- waking up from the dream/nightmare,” Chatem said about the art in his show “Until The Whistle Blows,” in an interview with Shooting Gallery, an art gallery that shows some of Chatem’s work.

Another recurring object in Chatem’s work is the Ishihara Color Test. The cards with colored dots are used to test for color-blindness. Several pieces contain the color test because he wanted to push himself as an artist. It gives us a look into Chatem’s life.

“I’m Red/Green colorblind, so certain colors become difficult to distinguish from each other. I remember seeing the Ishihara colorblind plates from childhood. With this last show I really wanted to push my color use outside of my comfort zone, so to address my own color perception seemed like an obvious approach. While painting my versions of the plates I mixed up two different colors on my palette that were the same value, painted a number or symbol on a neutral background than filled in the rest of the field with the other color. In the end I couldn’t see what I painted first,” Chatem said .

In future pieces, Chatem explains that he wants to continue to push himself in his art and carpentry. He promises to devote as much time and energy that he can so people won’t be able to predict what they’ll experience with his art.

Chatem’s art interacts with the audience. You can create action by controlling the movement that he brings to his pieces. Instead of just staring and moving on to the next piece, you can take the time to really get involved.

-Geneva Toddy