The Universe Is Coming to Town: USA Playhouse (Castle of Peace)
Jaylon Israel Hicks
THE UNIVERSE IS COMING TO TOWN: USA PLAYHOUSE (CASTLE OF PEACE)
3 October - 28 October 2023
London
Maximillian William, London is pleased to present The Universe Is Coming to Town: USA Playhouse (Castle of Peace), an installation by conceptual artist Jaylon Israel Hicks (b. 1993, Houston, Texas, USA).
The installation takes the form of an abandoned playhouse, interrogating external systems of oppression and our resulting longing for escape. Keeping with Hicks’ appetite for subversion, USA Playhouse (Castle of Peace) does not immediately appear peaceful. The spiked gateway is emblazoned with a reconfigured American flag, announcing Hicks’ national identity and alluding to the potential complexities of such an affiliation. At the peak of the Minneapolis protests in 2020, Hicks moved to Minnesota. In the face of a global reckoning with anti-Black racism, Hicks found himself juggling the incessant demands of everyday life while attempting to guard his selfhood. The installation parallels the myriad places where, despite a pervasive hostility, one is compelled to find peace.
Significantly, the structure is not a castle ‘for’ peace but a castle ‘of’ peace, with Hicks as creator and host. The version presented in the gallery is a reproduction of Hicks’ own castle, originally built in his living room in Minnesota from expanded polystyrene. Hicks’ design is yet to be resolved, and thus the reproduction evolved through frequent Zoom calls, collective troubleshooting, and symbiotic experimentation. The nature of the material causes the castle’s construction to appear tentative, unfixed in its details, emphasising its existence as a prototype of a prototype. At the height of the art world’s frenzied clamour for easy consumption, USA Playhouse (Castle of Peace) serves as a kind of counter-programming, offering a reset that highlights the fraught demands of artistic production and the shared process of translation.
PRESS
USA Playhouse (Castle of Peace) is featured in ‘What to See at Frieze London 2023’ by Alayo Akinkugbe
October 2023
