March 15 – April 30, 2025
Roll Up Project is pleased to present two installations by Kevin B. Chen. Chen’s finely detailed drawings and sculptures depict imagined cityscapes crowded with skyscrapers whose features reference architecture from around the globe. Scaled down to miniature proportions, the viewer takes a turn casting a shadow on these mega structures.
The buildings in Everything Must Go!, 2025, include apartment buildings whose gridlike regularity is disrupted with signs of life: curtains, satellite dishes, and graffiti all hint at the individuals who are present but not visible. They burst out of a cardboard box, scattering in every direction. For the past few years, Chen has been reflecting on the slow recovery of San Francisco’s downtown, asking, “what happens when the life that once animated entire buildings disappears, and where does it go?” In light of the recent proposed sale of some federal properties, the installation brings even more questions to mind. Whose responsibility is it to preserve historic buildings, and what does it mean to encounter them in our contemporary lives? How do individual people contribute to the history of a building, and will their stories be razed in the name of progress?
The related installation in the Third Street windows features buildings descending from the ceiling like stalactites. They cling to each other, depending on one another to form a larger entity. Like stalactites, cities form slowly over time, one building at a time.
Viewed together, these works are powerful reminders that the built environments are the result of individuals: the ideas of architects and planners, the labor of the builders, and the unique perspectives of the people who inhabit them.
About the Artist
Kevin B. Chen is a visual artist, curator, and educator. His drawings, collages, and sculptures have been exhibited at San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Southern Exposure, Asian Art Museum, Harn Museum of Art, and New York University Tisch School of the Arts, among others.
He serves as Curator at the Fine Arts Gallery at San Francisco State University, faculty at San Francisco State University and California College of the Arts, and a member of Recology’s Artist in Residence Program Advisory Board and Root Division’s Curatorial Committee. He has organized exhibitions and events for Headlands Center for the Arts, Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, University of Nevada Reno, SOMArts Cultural Center, and Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco & Kearny Street Workshop. His curatorial work has been reviewed in publications nationally, including Art in America, afterimage: the journal of media arts and cultural criticism, Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers, New Art Examiner, and Bidoun Magazine. He has delivered lectures at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Manetti Museum of Art at UC Davis, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Asian Art Museum, and at annual conferences for Americans for the Arts and California Association of Museums. Chen received a BA in Psychology and East Asian Languages & Cultures from Columbia University. His work is represented by Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco, CA.
Learn more about Kevin B. Chen on his website or Instagram.