Equivalents
by Kyle Schlie
Published by Healthy Mgmt.
April Spud Pick
With spring making its way back into Chicago, lets celebrate with Kyle Schlie’s Equivalents, published by Healthy Mgmt. The only text throughout the book is the numbered labels below each figure.
These figures may remind us of Chicago in the spring: mostly black shapes crowd around a small hint of green. The green space both interrupts and fits within the large black shapes, just as, somehow, grass makes its place among the concrete of the city.
Schlie’s introductory figures are rigid, rectangular, and seem to imitate sidewalks or brick walls. As the story progresses, though, these forms deconstruct into curves or disconnected pieces. In some figures the green shape grows to dominate the overall formation, yet by the end, green and black reach equivalent size. The green never quite retains its dominance, but it also never forfeits its position among the black shapes.
The same can be said of a Chicago spring. It may struggle in its scale and impact on the city overall, but once it takes hold it will stubbornly persist, adding color and variety to winter’s monotony.
You can find Equivalents in the Small Press Library in the Annex.
