Witches' Ladder
Chelsey Pettyjohn & Rachel TonThat

Chelsey Pettyjohn and Rachel TonThat present a duology of site-specific installations inspired by dioramas around the unique triangular shape of the 266 W 27th Street space. Witches’ Ladder, their first installment opening December 29th, builds a cloistered world influenced by children’s stories and the notion of suspended reality. The mixed media installation explores a dream of flight – encountering a variety of strange characters woven into the landscape of a story. Secluded from intrusion, the exhibition observes a moment fixed in time, where the viewer may determine their own narrative. Just as a ‘witches’ ladder’ becomes a tool for meditative ritual, the visual story of Pettyjohn and TonThat’s work becomes a sacred space for fantasies.

About the Artists

Rachel TonThat is a multidisciplinary artist and writer working with speculative narratives around themes of possible futures, memory, and space-time. Across the forms of installation, fiction, artist books, and virtual experiences, she creates parables for this and other realities. She currently lives between Zurich and Salem, MA.

For more information on Rachel visit her website and follow her on Instagram.

Chelsey Pettyjohn is an artist working in paint, sculpture, and installation. Her work engages a specific collection of self-made archetypes and iconography. Themes reveal personal history: childhood fantasies, forbidden sexuality, and the secrecy of inner worlds. Horses, clowns, witches, canids, drifters; the characters serve as recreations of early impressions, both real and imagined. Her work studies the juxtaposition of the delicate and grotesque – articulating the human experience in all its innocence and brutality. She currently lives and works in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

For more information on Chelsey visit her website and follow her on Instagram.