Despite Everything I Still Love You

Alex Schechter

June 8 - July 20, 2023

Peep is pleased to present “Despite Everything I Still Love You”, a solo exhibition by Alex Schechter. Starting in the blurred space of mythic and historical record, (the ur-continent Pangea, the Trojan War, the Dodo, family artifacts, etc), Alex Schechter’s new collection of sculptures and drawings play with the impulse to go back to an origin in an effort to augment a future.

Through material transformations and the collapsing of images, each of Schechter’s new works try to isolate one of his existential worries by embodying them with meaning in a context that feels uncanny. His sculptures and drawings capture brief moments of un-selfing; the connection between the physicality of ourselves and the physicality of the other. Schechter references objects that have cultural or symbolic weight, especially in an American context: cars, maps, houseplants, pop-culture figures.

There is a passage in the late Greek epic poem Iliad, where Achilles tells his horses, Xanthus and Balius, not to leave him dead on the battlefield the way they left his lover Patroclus. At that moment, the goddess Hera gifts Xanthus with the abilities of both speech and prophesy, allowing him to reply. Xanthus informs Achilles that they will keep him safe for the moment, but his death is foretold and that his inevitable demise is coming soon. Xanthus is given the opportunity to speak, to assert his knowledge of the future, and then is immediately silenced by the Erinyes (goddesses of fate and vengeance). He is not mentioned again for the rest of the story.

This passage has resonated with Schechter over the past year. In August of 2022, he moved to South Carolina for a job, leaving his partner and the city of Philadelphia where he lived the longest since he left home at age 17. During the same month, a climate report was issued by the IPCC with grim predictions for the next 10 years and his mother was diagnosed with stage four cancer. These moments, small and large, felt like road maps of major events to come. Yet the thing Schechter focused on is the commingling of the monumental and the mundane. So many choices feel moot and inconsequential, but we still have to make them. What is our responsibility for action when something is fated?