217 Harrison St and 307 3rd St, Oakland
June 21-August 6, 2025
I started with the little guys. Well, the “Little Guy Big Energy” (2025) series, by Lebanese-born architect and sculptor Jessy Slim. A trio of small(ish) works in stretched fabrics, wire, and chickpea clay—yes, basically hummus—they currently hang high on a wall, lofted inline above eye level and behind reflective glass, Roll Up Project’s 3rd St. window.
Around the corner, on Harrison, is the main feature, visible to the public Monday-Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.: this art (space) keeps office hours. Behind a paned display window, two much larger pieces stand, and stretch, seem to hang suspended, despite their visible armature. They’re big: 72 x 72 and 72 x 32 x 32 inches respectively, and set several feet above ground level, they are imposing and encompassing, gauzy and generous and amorphous and impermanent and solid all in one.
“Chickpea Landscapes, 12” (2025), contains string lights too, peeking through as just a glimpse, adding depth and warmth to an already heavily layered work. In shadows and peaks, tension and laxity, the ebb and flow of canvases, of drape and droop, it carries its own weight and buoys it, hardened but still soft looking, its colors gentle and muted, earthy, points dulled and obscured.
Its companion, starker and more restrained, full of absence and space, stands insular and expansive, contained and prepared to burst free at any moment. She’s floating, dancing, curved around her own form in a spiral, flowing in and out simultaneously. She is movement and levity, bears a weightlessness despite her heavy steel framing. She is “Chickpea Landscapes, Femme” (2025).
I Immediately realized there was no hope in trying to capture the sculptures as I saw them, nor any detail or true reflection of their composition from the street. Instead, I chose to lean into the world-building and creative spirit behind the works and forge into territories unknown and never to be lived again. What Roll Up lacks in control of the environment breeds a more creative sort of viewership, a different sort of accessibility to art.
Some of the details and depth of character of the crackled fabrics are lost in the bright of California summer, seen through glass. Thankfully, the streets offered another sort of depth. Heavy shadows, languorous leafy limbs and soft greens swaying, rich bricks and sharp steel and wooden poles to segment, and reflections on reflections, a multiplicity of mirrored windows and false flora to flesh out. Their location imbues “Landscapes” with new elements, layers, lights, and while hardly a pristine experience (I would love to get up close and personal with the dried legume patterning, but I’m a freak like that), it is a fun exercise in noticing in new ways.
Created as a “comment on the many economic and structural challenges the country faces,” the collection, as a part of Slim’s larger body of work, finds a “space in between, a place that deconstructs, re-frames, re-examines our surroundings, systems in place and their implications.” And in an urban landscape like Oakland, the need to challenge and to find and share beauty is a constant one.
Some other window, uh, art.
Check out Slim’s website for images of the art as you might see them and sense of her other media, and read a nice profile of her in one of the big name pubs here.
