ABOUT
Andrew Chalfen is an artist and musician living in Philadelphia.
ARTIST STATEMENT
His works allude to aerial views, cartography, architectural renderings, musical notation, urban densities, and other natural and man-made patterns, while not literally being any of those things. Rather, his pieces reflect his psychological states during their creation, a kind of topography of thought and mood as he works through various aesthetic themes that have long held his attention. Shapes often spill out over edges, suggesting unseen continuations beyond, while others seek containment. His recent mixed media assemblages with painted dowels focuses on connections, intersections, and layers, a non-representational way of depicting how we relate to the world and to one another.
Chalfen’s process mirrors that of his songwriting and music arranging. He utilizes the repetition of a small selection of formal elements, subtle variation, the timbre of color palate, rhythm, and a combination of randomization strategies and intentionality. Every work is a process journey, in which he refines elements that grab him from previous pieces, and then pushes into unknown territory with experimentation and risk, always iterating. He follows his instincts, deviates from them when necessary, and trusts the process to guide the work to a successful outcome and maybe even a breakthrough or two.
Viewers may not know what to focus on first, becoming overwhelmed and subsequently absorbed in the details. The experience is reminiscent of mediation. Certainly working on these pieces in the studio is a meditative, flow state way of being, where Chalfen can take his time to think about and explore through art-making themes of nostalgia, anxiety, play, musicality, fragility, impenetrable data, accretion and erosion, and physical and psychic fragmentation.
BIOGRAPHY HIGHLIGHTS
Andrew Chalfen is a visual artist and musician living and working in Philadelphia. His work has been featured at two solo shows in 2023 thus far and has appeared at many exhibits nationally and in and around Philadelphia, PA, such as at the Abington Art Center, The Hoyt Center, the Delaware Contemporary, Viridium Gallery, and many Philadelphia locations via his art collective Inliquid. His work has appeared on book jackets and rock album covers. He is the recipient of several awards and am the winner of the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series Mid-Atlantic Regional for 2018 and my piece “Vibration Lands” was displayed at SCOPE Miami during the Art Basel/Art Miami fair.
MUSIC
Andrew Chalfen has led and been a member of many bands. The Wishniaks (1986-91) toured the U.S. extensively and released two albums, an ep, two singles, and tracks scattered across various compilations. A video managed to be appear twice on MTV’s 120 minutes. He has since been a member of the Barnaby’s, Bundtcake Vesuvius, Gimme, the Shimmers, Joey Sweeney, and Helen Back and the Str8 Razors. In 1995 he founded The Trolleyvox, which over the next 13 or so years with a rotating cast of musicians (but mainly lead vocalist Beth Filla) released five albums, a number of covers, and also did it’s fare share of touring before a career in music completely stopped making sense.
I Think Like Midnight (2012 -present) is an instrumental band he formed with the Dead Milkmen’s Dean “Clean” Sabatino in 2012 and currently consists of him on guitar, Dean on drums, Josh Newman (American Altitude, Silver Ages) on bass, and Alesandr Yāker (Room Tone) on keys and occasional guitar. The elevator pitch is that they’re super-melodic and original indie instrumental rock music, with quirky intelligent twists, guitar twang, and hints of Surf, Folk Rock, and Motorik. They have released three albums, Warm Seclusion Structure (2014) and This Land Is Your Mind (2018), Interim Contingent (2021) and an ep Kompromat EP (2019). They were to record our fourth album in Spring 2020 when Covid-19 hit. It is now completed and in production for a Fall 2023 release.
For decades Andrew has composed and recorded instrumental music, first on a cassette 4-track machine, then digitally. He is also a guitarist and song co-writer in Velvet Kirtan with Beth Filla, and has been known to stretch his live guitar skills and make new neural connections in the bands of Adrien Reju and Matt Keating.
EXHIBITIONS
Solo:
2024 “Effervescent” – Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Lincoln Square, Philadelphia, PA
2023 “Mind Gardens” – The Open Gallery, Vincennes, IN
2023 “The Pixelated World” – Arts & Education at the Hoyt, New Castle, PA
2021 “Winter Solo Series” – Abington Art Center, Jenkintown, PA
2015 “Selected Drawings” – Aksum Restaurant, Philadelphia, PA
Duo:
2022 “Synesthesia” – Inliquid @ The National Building, Philadelphia, PA
2019 “Patterns of Obsession” – Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, Philadelphia, PA
Group:
2025 “Regional Juried Spring Open Exposition” – Wayne Art Center, Wayne, PA
2025 “Surface” – juried exhibition, D’Art Center, Norfolk, VA 2025: “I Spy” – Powell Lane Arts, Collingswood, NJ
2025 “Unreal & Non-representational – 5” – juried online exhibition, Gallery 4%, San Francisco, CA. Awarded Distinction certificate.
2024 “Switch: Small Works – The Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Philadelphia, PA
2024 “Metamorphosis” – Morton Contemporary Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2024 “215/610 Contemporary” – Delaware County Community College, Media, PA
2024 “Inliquid Toasts 25” – Dirty Frank’s/Inliquid, Philadelphia, PA
2024 “On Process” – Da Vinci Art Alliance, Philadelphia, PA
2024 “Iteration/Reiteration” – juried exhibition, Touchstone Gallery, Washington, DC
2024 “Collage/Assemblage” – online juried exhibition, Site:Brooklyn Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2024 “/ab,strak(t)/” online juried exhibition, ArtFluent, Boston, MA
2024 “In the Abstract” – San Fernando Valley Culture Center, Encino, CA
2024 “9th Annual Benefit” – Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia
2024 “Materials Matter” – Powel Lane Arts, Collingswood, NJ
2024 “Waiting to Detonate” – 3-artist show, Arts Council of Princeton, NJ
2023 “Attraction to Abstraction” – Wayne Arts Center, Wayne, PA
2023 “New Painting” – online juried exhibition, Site:Brookeln Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2023 “Abstract Is Abstract” – online juried exhibition, HMVC Gallery, NY, NY
2023 “Wings” – online exhibition, Gallphium/Biafarin, Canada
2023 “Earth” – online exhibition, Exhibizone/Biafarin, Canada
2023 “Completely Color Virtual Exhibition” – Inter-Society Color Council
2023 “3rd New Appalachia Show” – Vestige Concept Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA
2022 “Tactile Sublime” – Online group exhibition, Dodomu Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2022 “Motion” – Online group exhibition, Art Fluent, Boston, MA
2022 “ Order/Disorder” – Online group exhibition, B Extraordinaire Gallery, St. Louis, MO
2022 “Neoteric Abstract X” – Limner Gallery, Hudson, NY
2022 “1st Annual Juried Show” – Powell Lane Arts, Collingswood, NJ
2022 “Celebrating Color” – Juried exhibition, Rhode Island Watercolor Society, Pawtucket, RI
2022 “Drawn to Macon V” – Macon Arts Alliance, Macon, GA
2021 “Biafarin Awards 2021” – Online group exhibition,” Ontario, Canada
2021 “Hope and Possibility” – Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2021 “Ellarslie Open 37/38” – Juried exhibition, Trenton City Museum at Ellarsile, Trenton, NJ
2021 “Small Wonders” – Juried exhibition, Fine Line Creative Arts Center, St. Charles, IL
2021 “Textures and Patterns” – Juried exhibition, Las Lagunas Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2020 “Purely Abstract” – Juried exhibition, Fine Line Creative Arts Center, St. Charles, IL
2020 “Abstractions” – Juried exhibition, Cape Cod Cultural Center, South Yarmouth, MA
2020 “Riverfront 20/20” – Juried exhibition, Delaware Contemporary, Wilmington, DE
2020 “Small Works, Big Talent” – Juried exhibition, Las Lagunas Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA
2020 “Congruence” – Juried online exhibition, I Like Your Work Podcast
2020 “Banished for the Good of the Realm” – Inliquid Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2019 “Hatch” – Park Towne Place, Philadelphia, PA
2018 “Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series Finalists” – SCOPE Miami Beach, FL
2018 “Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series Mid-Atlantic Regional” – Arch Enemy Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2018 “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” – Painted Bride Art Center, Philadelphia, PA
2018 “New Now” – Inliquid Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2017 “Natural” – James Oliver Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2014 “Paintings and Drawings” – Seeds Gallery, Philadelphia, PA (duo exhibition)
AWARDS
2024: First Place for “Stick Shift Flower” at the juried show “215/610 Contemporary” Delaware County Community College, Media, PA
2023: First Place for “Looks Like It Sounds Good” at “Abstract Is Abstract,”, online juried exhibition, HMVC Gallery, NY, NY
2020: Delaware Contemporary Popular Vote Award for “Vibration Lands”
2020: Prisma Art Prize finalist for “Symphony Wave”
2020: Colored Pencil Society of America: Creative Art Materials/Caran d’Ache Award for Distinction for “You Are Here”
2018: Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series Mid-Atlantic Regional finalist for “Vibration Lands”
PUBLICATIONS
Chalfen, Andrew “Look Up Coloring Book”, Thunder Bay Press, 2017 (a collection of 84 pen and ink drawings.)
Artfolio2021 – Catalog juried by Beatriz Esguerra. Includes three works.
Cover art for the book “Who Should We Be Online?” Karen Frost-Arnold, Oxford University Press, 2022.
Cover art for the book “Abstractions and Embodiments: New Histories of Computing and Society,” edited by Abbate and Dick, Johns Hopkins Press, 2022.