Chashama is pleased to present Skin Trade, an exhibition of work based on man’s relationship to animals as decorative trophies; the beauty of the natural world in an artificial setting; and our own arrogance in pertaining to the animal kingdom curated by artist, curator and writer Dan Halm.

Why are we compelled to capture and preserve our killings? Is this man’s need to feel superior over the animal kingdom? Or is it a way to capture a moment in time, between hunter and prey? A way to celebrate one’s hunting accomplishments or simply a way to preserve what once roamed the Earth?

Employing techniques of handicraft, specifically crochet; artist Elaine Bradford creates a world where each taxidermied animal straddles the odd, sad and familiar. Spending hours creating custom sweaters for these animals she cannot help but project onto them a life of their own. The soft, touchable stripes of color accentuate contours and bring a formalist beauty to these figures.

Using sculpturally enhanced taxidermy, Simen Johan explores our predilection towards imagination and emotion, rather than reason. These absurd evolutions of the animal kingdom serve as symbols of those objects we manipulate to make our own reality desirable.

With his found object sculptures, Eric Lendl tackles man’s fixation with defeating an/or overpowering nature in order to achieve a sense of strength. Using objects that are associated with masculinity, his aim is to produce an alternative to a common and naturally destructive form of trophy, the taxidermy head.

Christian Siekmeier uses his experience of growing up in a hunting family and creates a series of photographs that address the hunt for the perfect specimen. In his series Venison, Siekmeier addresses what lies beneath the skin and how we relate to the animal, once muscle and sinew are replaced by polystyrene.

With the photographs of Amy Stein, man’s evolving relationship with the “wild” is placed in the foreground. Through staged human interactions with live and taxidermied animals, her imagery considers man’s fascination with, and fear of, the natural world. The series challenges the viewer to consider the human desire to more directly experience and to ultimately tame the wild.

In Deertown, Kimberly Witham combines appropriated images from deer hunters and taxidermists into luxury home magazines. “As the woodlands become suburbs, animal habitats dwindle. Perhaps they can move in with us.” states Witham, “These magazines offer a promise of wealth, relaxation and fulfillment. Through digital collage I have transformed the original images into a grotesque parody of their own sanitized perfection.”