Spring Scene Report | June 1, 2021
Zak Elstein: In Decline
by Jacob Gitane
Zak Elstein at work. Photographs by Chloe Edington
“Without fail,” Zak Elstein says, “every single box ends up crooked and it drives me fucking crazy.” He says, “I don’t know how or why everything falls so out of level.”
Elstein says this on the floorspace of the 1078 Gallery—a backbone of local art and art-related emporia—located in Chico, California at 1710 instead of 1078 Park Avenue because labels can only take you so far. Elstein understands this, and so adorns his currently askew Shadowboxes with titles like “Drill Sign,” “Jaw Wings,” “Crystal Antlers,” and, a favorite, “Regret Satellite.”
“I wouldn’t want to diminish them,” he says of the 19 pieces that line the walls of “In Decline,” Elstein’s first major and undeniably successful public showcasing of his work. “Even writing that program was pushing it a bit for me, so we’ll see what people take from it all.”
The program is a handwritten sentiment talking of decay and resentment and the changing of narratives, and teases the LED-lined bell curves that stretch across the gallery’s north wall. A strip runs across Time on the X-Axis, Growth/Decay on the Y. Simple knobs allow one to warp the brightness and color values of the strip, and two big red buttons make the light streak hopscotch from one curve to another, and to another.
Despite tasteful floor design and the visceral, ghostly beauty cast by the dioramas, some might easily find themselves overwhelmed to the senses; the boxes, the parabolic LED installation—all projecting an utterly stone-towering presence upon the viewer—invite interaction. Switches on the Shadowboxes allow one to cycle through various modes of lighting, soundscape, and occasionally CRT screens with cryptic messages like “We did our best. We love you.”
Otherwise fully inhabited ecosystems ask you to help finish their sentence.
Push me.
Pull me.
Complete me.
Bodies begin to fill the space as Elstein continues tinkering with levels and wires. Lines begin to form. Eager hands glide over switches they’re not sure they’re allowed to touch. Eyes cross from surface to surface, desperately trying to drink it all in.
Some just gaze. The complete, breathing worlds inside the boxes gaze back.
Seven days earlier, a portrait of Jesus herding a flock of sheep greets me at Elstein’s home and workshop. Painted with anachronistic greys and ochres, composed against shadowy skies and wilted trees, Elsetin’s sole modification—red, intermittently glowing eyes per lamb—is perhaps the artifact’s least bizarre component.
“It came with the move,” Elstein says, “and doing that to it just made sense to me.”
After communion with the Blood and the Flesh, one must step down a skip of stairs into the basement-level living space—a delicately lit arena decorated with plants, warped art from warped friends, and a dark hound named Lola—then take another few strides to find the sawdust and lumber-scented room where glass is cut, fabric sewn, and roadkill is boiled down to the bone.
It might be prudent at this point to explain what a Shadowbox is—the exhibition sale sheet clinically describes a given piece as:
-Found objects
-Fabric
-Electronic components
and occasionally -Sound by valve controls
Sterile descriptors aside, observe “Tape Dog;” a pooch’s skull centered in front of a bouquet of pressed flowers that trail off into abstract geometries along the edges. Adjustable lights provide an authority, as does the Victorian frame housing the unit. A tape spools around the box, completing the composition, and plays a Lynchian warble that Elstein admits may or may not be intentional.
The effect is arresting and, perhaps as this viewer just indulged, beckons projection as it continues to impose its own history and biases.
Your correspondent will henceforth assume some exposure to the series of Zak Elstein’s Shadowboxes (given the presumed discovery of this very profile). Perhaps the Instagram algorithm blessed you with their presence. Perhaps you’ve seen them decorating the walls of the briefly lived but vital Blackbird coffee shop (that did everything else a good “coffee shop” does). If you’re sensitive to the sublime, perhaps you’ve seen them in your dreams.
In his workshop, Zak Elstein laments over a discarded box.
“I made this one, the first tape-playing one, when I thought I had covid,” he says, “and you know how you spend so much time over something and just—fuck-ups and tangles and distortions. You’ll see how the new ones actually work—big difference—but it took me forever to figure out.”
The apparent dedication to success is embodied by a cubicle-sized graveyard of abandoned or otherwise uncompleted Shadowboxes dusting in the corner. “Just ones I couldn’t bring up to par for the show. Like this one I couldn’t properly measure the front-facing glass for.”
From a seemingly shambolic desk drawer, Elstein produces a glass-cutting blade and offers a crash course in the art. A single slice informed by what must be hundreds of hours of practice cuts neatly across an already mangled glass pane. Two accidentally beautiful shards result, neither of which I think to ask for.
“Don’t you ever fucking pay someone to do this for you. It is so simple.”
Elstein walks us through the rest of his working area, showing off a beehive of synths and amplifiers (“I mess around on guitar,” he explains, “I usually make glitchy little shit, but lately I’ve enjoyed honing a classical guitar acumen. That feels good right now”), a pile of protoboards knotted with wires (“These new Arduino boards, they make those old LED’s look like crayons. They are the shit. Mark II Shadowboxes, coming eventually”), and loose sketches of boxes past and future (''That sketch is the most planning I’ll do on one of these. I like to look at each one as a puzzle”).
Elstein says, “I really do love every part of the process: the soldering, the puzzle-piecing, the hiding of parts and wires.”
One examines his home and imagines this enthusiasm crossing over into his interior design, every piece of backlighting and furnishing appearing to be as custom-designed as any Shadowbox.
He says, “I’ve really been leaning into collaboration lately, which is why I asked Lagrima (staple of Chico music, who sounds a bit like if Brian Eno produced Aphex Twin, then got drizzled with the substrate of total darkness) to do music for the boxes at the show.”
He says, “You never know what you’re going to get when you introduce someone else into the mix.”
All indications of a vital, self-critical, and endlessly evolving voice working in the face of an audience that might not know what to make of such a thing.
Seven days later, the audience does its best.
“They’re like little portals elsewhere,” says one exhibit-dweller, “but you don’t really understand where to unless you surrender yourself to it.”
“I find it bold, but in an understated way, you know?” says another, “Like it’s not being macho about its power, which makes it more appealing to me.”
Says another, “There’s a risk of too much repetition, I think, but so long as the craftsmanship evolves while remaining true to its theme, this can go on forever and keep meaning something to someone.”
Says another, “This is exactly like that Nine Inch Nails music video.”
One might expect such colorful commentary to be freely offered at the evening reception to such a popular art exhibition. In fact, coaxing a single word of opinion fared nearly as difficult as convincing folk that it was indeed O-K to touch the art. Mind that not a single soul in the room signposted disinterest, or even ambivalence. If anything, more floor space might have been appreciated for the volume of bodies wrestling for a coherent, socially-distanced view of each piece.
Why then is one met with such strained reaction?
Overheard, at last: “It’s a little scary and I don’t like the thought of touching something dead.” Does this prepubescent observer speak for all, exposing some primordial aversion carried well into adulthood? Can it really be that superficial, and somehow also that poignant?
“A few people told me they thought a woman made them,” Elstein says, “and that’s honestly the best compliment anyone could possibly give me.”
If not for totally self-reflective critique, the effect on the gathered crowd is undeniably palpable; Elstein has taken an impossibly esoteric medium—one that asks to reconcile mortality and beauty as a mingling pair—and placed it on the public’s doorstep, and the public said, “Yes, thank you.”
Elstein says, “I’ve sold a few already. It’s never really the ones I expect to go, but they’re going.”
The exhibition is a triumph. It thrives, it speaks, it exists. But soon it won’t, and neither will we, but it’s ok because we’ve been primed for that.
Make It Stand Out
Zak Elstein is an artist, a solder-er, woodworker, bone-collector, and a writer of deft prose, but hopefully you’ve already gleaned all of this. Elstein is also a programmer, a musician, a reader of hard science fiction, an occasional farmer and plant-guy, a fearer of gentrification and proponent of grassroots community engagement, a once-teacher turned creative dilettante far out from his Salt Lake City origins, an affable physical presence who smiles often and listens carefully (because you can always tell), and in less than three years of publicly presenting his work, Elstein has neatly installed his own voice within the collective consciousness of Chico, California, and perhaps beyond in short time.
We finally speak at length.
ZE: That’s like the main goal right now, to get it all out of Chico.
Have you made any moves towards that end yet? Any waving of your hands in front of Bay or Sacramento folk?
ZE: Pre-pandemic, I spent like two months—between my last show and everything closing down— I spent those months trying my hardest to talk to people, find places, curators. I think—I hope—I’ll have a lot more success after this 1078 thing, having finally put this up in front of a number of scrutinizing faces. I think it’ll be a different story going forward.
And how did the 1078 exhibition come to be?
ZE: It was just kind of the next step—you know, after having done coffee shops and bars—so I filled out a form the gallery asks of you. This little artistic statement… I did that pre-pandemic, already a little discouraged after getting no calls from other places I’d tried that with…
It seems insane to me that there would be any hesitation on any curator’s part…
ZE: Well, people seem to like this show, so we’ll see.
Do you think you could describe the show to us a little bit? What one sees as they walk into the space?
ZE: Well… I guess there’s just a bunch of little boxes on the wall. And then I tried to make this little installation piece—I had a vision that it would be a bit more like a children’s museum, actually. You know, more things to touch, headphones for the soundboxes. But, obviously, COVID, and the exhibits are tactile as it is, so I didn’t really want to push things any farther…
The tactility of your work is something I’ve long wondered about. What inspired that aspect of the Shadowboxes, and what kept it interesting enough to recur?
ZE: I think it’s been a slow process of getting the boxes to where they are now. Before moving to California, I worked with children—and I had nieces and nephews who I liked to craft things for—so it was kind of just figuring out what kinds of things kids would enjoy interacting with.
You say as much in the included program—that you used to teach 4th graders. Was that what you were doing before moving to Chico?
ZE: Yeah, that was about 12 years ago now.
What prompted the change?
ZE: You know, I’ve been working with plants and produce consistently for a long time. I was doing 4th and 8th grade teaching for about a decade, so it just felt time for a change.
On that note, it’s sounding like a lot of your creative choices have been informed by your interactions with children. Were you able to find time and avenues for creative expression in between grading papers?
ZE: Only a little bit, and that was a big part of why I left. [That] life was just so consuming, for one. And then you don’t have a whole lot of energy for anything else at the end of the day. And two, my life had been stuck in such a rigid structure at the time. I was working with kids all the time; after-school stuff, summer camp stuff, you know… And then I realized, being more of a writer at the time, that I didn’t have much to write about—to make any art about. It felt kind of small and adventure-less. So that was a big reason. To find someone, something, to make art about.
Do you feel like you’ve found that here?
ZE: Oh yeah. It’s really raw out here. I think a lot more so than in other places. Living out in the [Concow] woods definitely showed me a lot about the world, myself, maybe even changed some brain chemistry… I’d say it’s been a success.
I imagine that wilderness was great for finding the marrow-based materials for your work…
ZE: Yeah, totally! And actually, the drive out here, passing through Nevada, is where a lot of the bone collecting started. Now I’ve got a lot of weird sources… roadkill, a friend who’s always killing birds on his property—I’ve actually got a lot of friends out here who help me find carcasses, come to think of it… A close friend taught me how to boil carcasses down to the bone and you would not believe how little it smells. The process almost feels more gentle than it should…
14 days later, the exhibition is a memory. An Instagram post. Lock, stock, and out the door, gone to the highest bidders. Everyone is looking to the future, because what else can you do? Elstein is teaching a class on basic LED coding this summer, and friends Claire Fong and Michael Bone will respectively teach machine sewing and observational painting. “The Art Camp,” with perhaps more friends on the way. Because why shouldn’t they be?
Seven days earlier, hushed tones continue to fill the otherwise exuberant gallery space. As though everyone is excited and tickled, but unsure of why. Like a child savoring an exotic new food, but reluctant to taste again; unwilling or unable to explain why. Except, here, the fruit:
Seven days earlier, Elstein’s dog sprawls over my lap.
You have a way of making decay palatable.
ZE: Do I?
The name of your maiden exhibition is “In Decline.” Stages of rot and degradation are the theme, and the included program makes a case for halting, or repurposing decay. Where does that fascination originate?
ZE: I imagine we’re going to be this kind of scavenger people one day, you know? We’ll be digging for plastic to make fuel out of, shit we used to just throw out. We’ll lose the means of harvesting and production—and that’s the kind of thing I think about. We’re going to get to that point and be like, well how do we remember those people and that time, who were abundantly corrupt and wasteful? I wonder what that decay will feel like as we fall apart.
That almost sounds anthropological, like how we develop our understanding of the past through all the religious artifacts that persisted.
ZE: Yeah, that’s exactly it.
Does your work feel religious to you?
ZE: Umm… yeah. In my world, I think everything is religious. Everything we do is tied to demons that rule our lives and whatnot, figuratively and not. And that giving all of that power to these organized groups… mmm anyway, yeah, I think a lot of it is imagining what people will believe in a long time from now—when there’s evidence of those religions from long ago that doesn’t really mean anything to anyone anymore. There’s already a lot of that now—symbols and garbage from the past that doesn’t mean anything.
I personally enjoy the idea of someone, millennia from now, stumbling across one of the boxes, suddenly incepting an entire archaeological field—what the hell did this culture believe in and worship??
ZE: Ha! We can only hope.
“TAKE ONE,” shouts the exhibition’s program, which is undoubtedly Elstein’s most comprehensive word on things. He relates the story of a blacktop game students would play— back when students figured into things for him—that would inevitably turn acrimonious and subsequently call for banning. Elstein takes this to be microcosmic for humanity as a whole—events of rising innovation and advancement, coalescing into brief but powerful sweet spots of prosperity and functionality… all before decaying into eras of rot and scavenging: the natural cycle of things, now made visual on the wall of a pretty gallery wall, in a pretty little town, that happens to be a pretty nice place to live.
Shrines encasing the dead, and bar graphs delineating failure. One might understand if all this feels a little fatalistic to a given viewer, if, for all the plays for aesthetics and inarguable achievements in craftsmanship, the final product is a cold reminder of human folly. As though embarrassment of a fate we all intrinsically know is what keeps one from fully engaging, intellectually and emotionally. As though being told that you will perish—physically, maybe sooner spiritually—is something you must fear. Something you must desperately avoid.
As though that’s all truly inescapable, and there’s not a big red button in front of you offering a chance to change the record.
As though your own biases have kept you from surrendering to the work that stands before you—made you reject any nuanced notions of death and autonomy and retreat into a mode of self-comforting, when you might more productively reject all notions that you’re witnessing anything but one of the most complex expressions: Memory made manifest. Something that straddles past and future without ever quite being present, if at first seemingly indifferent to the present, to your gaze.
There’s a tension as you interact with a Shadowbox—less so playing God than holding a mannered dialogue with something arcane, perhaps not mortal at all. It’s like speaking a hymn: Watch your intrigue grow. Watch yourself become aware of a deeper existence. Maybe feel a temporary reassurance that there is no beginning, and no end. Then all at once, the outward appearance of meaning is transcended, and you find yourself struggling to comprehend that deep and formidable mystery:
I am dying. You are dying. Second by second. All is transient. Does it matter? Do I bother?
“Yes, I do,” one might whisper. “Life is fantastic. It never ends, only changes.”
Flesh to bone to flesh.
“Life is arid and tedious,” you might instead say, “and it never ends, only changes.”
Bone to flesh to bone.
“Maybe I don’t know, and the ebb and flow is ok.”
Flip a switch. Hit a button. Changing the record isn’t always as easy, but take a chance and see how it feels.
Jacob Gitane wraps materials because little else makes sense to him. Catch him before he’s gone.