Chad Abbley, Special Offer, The Birdcage
By Doug Welch
Special Offer, a solo exhibition by Chad Abbley at The Birdcage SF, invites viewers to reflect on our evolving relationship with technology and its pervasive influence on daily life. The Birdcage, equal parts art gallery, espresso bar, and pop-up event space, provides an informal setting to view these pieces.
Abbley began his artistic journey as a graffiti artist in Riverside County, where he and his friends traversed the massive storm drains of Southern California. With nearly fifteen years of painting experience, he has developed a style that blends the boldness of street art with the layered precision of studio practice. Working primarily in acrylic on canvas, Abbley experiments with diluted pigments and layered applications, creating vibrant surfaces that resemble the visual language of graphic design. His use of sharp contrasts and saturated color reflects his graffiti roots, where commanding attention is a challenge and a necessity.
Steve Jobs Acrylic on canvas 24x30inches
One of the works, Steve Jobs, exemplifies Abbley’s hybrid process. Beginning with a canvas masked entirely in white tape, the artist projects a design onto the surface and cuts into the tape with a razor, before applying paint. This process is repeated color by color and shape by shape. The result is a composition shaped by mechanical projection and by human skill—a collaboration between the artist and machine. The process being dictated by the projection gives it a rule bound and contained quality. Defined by hard lines and angular edges, the piece reflects a feature of our modern lives: assisted by technology, yet animated by human intervention. The piece’s palette of deep greens and browns interrupted by vivid orange, transforms near-camouflage into something electric. Within its abstract designs, viewers may glimpse fragments of arms, hearts, or animals—evidence of the mind’s instinct to process the abstract into the familiar, like background software running in parallel. Noticing the mind’s relentless drive to categorize and define, allows for a meditative practice for the viewer. Awareness and the ability to let go of this propensity of the mind, serves as a reminder of our humanity.
50,400k Wh/day
Acrylic on canvas
36x24 inches
Other works expand on our connection to technology. The piece, 50,400 KWh/day, a screen print of a server rack, meditates on the infrastructure of computation and its cost. The title nods to the staggering daily energy consumption of major AI companies, grounding the image in ecological and ethical questions. Contrasted with other pieces, the image is metallic, industrial and conveys a sense of isolation and power-devoid of the bright, bold and varied colors of many of the other pieces-this piece appears to represent technology’s brute force when its human creators are excluded. The use of screen printing represents an expansion of the artist’s tool kit beyond acrylic on canvas-representing change and expansion, another parallel with technology.
Artificial Ignorance Acrylic, LEDs on canvas 18x24inches
Perhaps most striking is Artificial Ignorance, a mixed-media canvas embedded with LED lights and simple circuits. By fusing analog paint with obsolete-seeming electronics, Abbley highlights the fleeting nature of technological progress. Today’s marvels quickly become tomorrow’s relics.
The work compels viewers to consider not only how deeply technology is woven into our lives, but also where this relentless acceleration is leading us. What inventions now on the horizon will, in a few decades, feel quaint and forgotten?
Spectral Interlude Acrylic on canvas 16x20inches
Through Special Offer, Abbley combines graffiti’s boldness and graphic design’s clarity into dialogue with questions about technological evolution and interdependence.The result is a body of work that asks us to contemplate technology not as a neutral actor but as an active partner in shaping both art and life, ultimately making us more aware of the various directions we can choose for our future. Abbley skillfully adheres to abstraction yet weaves compelling narratives into the compositions, thus bridging the expanse between what is often seen as a choice between one or the other.
