Mel Chin's Unsolved Mysteries

Mel Chin, painting from Interpretation of Vision, 2024

Mel Chin asked people to relate stories of "natural, spiritual, or supernatural experiences" that led to "a life-altering change of perspective." The tales form the raw material of Interpretation of Vision, a work commissioned for the Hammer's "Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice" (through Jan. 5, 2025). Chin transformed other people's visions into small yet powerful paintings—ex-votos for a "spiritual, not religious" age. Each painting is two-sided, with one side representing objective reality and the other a subjective experience. A wall-like plinth allows both sides of each picture to be seen, though not at once.

The paintings plumb the mystery of our existence through symbols that skew banal. UFOs, ghosts, stormy nights, and other media-driven signifiers of the numinous occur. Other pictures veer into film noir, self-taught naïveté, and spiritual-in-art abstraction. None of the underlying stories are explained, nor can they be inferred with any certainty. The paintings remain inexplicable, like life itself. As Gertrude Stein put it: "There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer."