Albert Chamillard

Ok, here is the story of how Funhouse came to be:

My Dad passed away in August of 2022 from advanced Parkinson’s, my Mom died several months later from complications arising from advanced dementia – nether seemed a good way to go from what I witnessed.

Months later, I was drinking a beer and thinking about my parents and crushed the can when I was done and was struck by how perfectly it had collapsed on itself – I wondered what it would be like to crush hundreds of them, how they would look arranged on a shelf or on the floor, what meaning could be derived from crushed cans and how that related to my parents deaths. This led to a trial and error process where I created a kind of memorial for my folks that also included elements of Arte Povera, Process Art and Minimalist design principles….i wanted to exhibit it somewhere and devised the idea of a group show based on the theme of embracing death and the process of dying.

I invited 6 other artists (although I would have liked another 10 to 12) and, surprisingly to me, they all accepted…..I am struck by how differently each of us responded to the prompt, how different each artist thinks about the end of life.