In Luke Chiswell's latest Working Titles series, process becomes both subject and structure. Recreation is used as a way of staying engaged, of keeping things moving so that new moments can be found. Flattened cardboard boxes, from luxury packaging to standard moving cartons, are rebuilt, scaled through painting and hand-pulled screen prints. Close to their originals yet marked by subtle shifts of imperfections, the works explore perceived value, drawing from the streets of New York City where jewelry boxes and moving boxes meet the same pavement. Shown opened and spread flat, like emptied skins, they hold the trace of what they once contained while remaining open to projection. This emptiness mirrors the idea of the “Working titles” series, a container of potential. Phrases drawn from Chiswell's metaphor of “The studio is a garden, your time is water, creativity is sunshine, the works are flowers, move across the surface and drift toward Asemic writing, allowing language to function as both image and method. “Working Titles treats the box as both container and metaphor, emptied of contents yet full of potential, where recreation, imperfection, and process become the way something new is found.”
