The people in Chloe Chiasson’s paintings look like characters in old Turner Classic Movies. There’s drama in their poses and a cinematic quality in how they interact with one another and within space, whether they’re sitting on a fence, leaning against a tree, or drinking at a bar. Chiasson’s desaturated palette also gives these works the longing air of a faded photo album. Physically, they could belong on stage, like realistic backdrops in a play, as each consists of a shaped panel, constructed so the scenes are highly dimensional—in relief. 

If Chiasson is playing with elements of production and fantasy, it is with the very sincere intention of building an unbounded reality she wishes to be true. For the past year and a half, she has been exploring imagery that depicts “this world of a very queered south, pulling from both a lived experience and the imagination of its alternative,” she says. With this comes “the general reconstruction of southern space as queer space.” 

Growing up in the small conservative town of Port Neches in Texas, Chiasson felt alienated because of her queer identity until she moved to New York. Large-scale and often focused on acts of intimacy of various scales, her works feel like quiet celebrations of gender fluidity and true sexual identity, but tinged with a yearning for what could have been in an ideal world. “I’m really focused on creating a world and body of work that, for the moment,” she says, “is focused on critiquing and challenging while simultaneously creating this version of a South, this version of my home, that I maybe wouldn’t have felt I had to leave.” 

In Miami, she focused on a large painting of a person in a truck, their arm leaning out toward the viewer. Because the work was destined for her first institutional solo show, her vision for it did not change. But making it among other artists with their own goals and desires was its own gift: “Working alongside them reminded me why I love doing what I do,” Chiasson says, “but also the reason I am doing it.”