OPENING RECEPTION
FRIDAY, JULY 24, 2026
5-8 PM

ON VIEW
JULY 24 - AUGUST 22, 2026

FOR INQUIRES
Please contact hello@chefasprojects.com

Chefas Projects is delighted to welcome back sculptor Jessie Weitzel Le Grand for her fourth exhibition with the gallery entitled Astral Accessories.

Communication arrives fractured: as static, interference, intuition, and half-remembered technologies that once promised connection.

In Astral Accessories, Portland-based artist Jessie Weitzel Le Grand presents a new body of sculptural work that imagines obsolete technological devices as enigmatic relics from alternate realities. Equal parts artifact, machine, and living organism, the sculptures transform familiar forms into mysterious conduits for uncertainty, speculation, and wonder.

Drawing on the visual language of outdated communications technology, the exhibition considers what remains when systems of transmission fail or become obsolete. Unmanageable and invisible, signals continue to pass through space, whirring beyond perception, like sirens too quiet to hear. Meaning emerges imperfectly through noise, distortion, and interruption, where messages are received as static, interference, and fragmented memory rather than clear transmission.

Rather than offering resolution, Astral Accessories embraces ambiguity. The works suggest speculative tools for communicating across impossible distances: between worlds, across time, or with forms of intelligence that remain just beyond comprehension. Suspended between archaeology and science fiction, the sculptures ask viewers to reconsider the objects that mediate our relationships with technology, memory, and the unknown.

Utilizing an eclectic array of materials, including ceramics, thermoplastic, flashe paint, and even materials used in fly tying, Weitzel Le Grand blurs the boundaries between art, artifact, and technology. Interested in exploring how we perceive reality and questioning the certainty of what we see, she embeds natural elements such as orchids, moths, and fragments of coral within computer motherboards, rotary telephones, and other obsolete technologies in disorienting, exuberant configurations. By reimagining these nostalgic devices in playful yet unfamiliar ways, she encourages viewers to question their function and invent their own narratives around the mysterious systems they seem to inhabit.

By transforming obsolete technologies into uncanny relics, Weitzel Le Grand creates a landscape where the familiar becomes strange and failed technologies become vessels for new forms of connection.

Jessie Weitzel Le Grand (b. 1987) was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, where she continues to live and work. She received a BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and an MAT from Marylhurst University. Her work has recently been exhibited at Galerie Lefebvre & Fils (Paris, France), Outback Arthouse (Los Angeles, California), Oregon Contemporary (Portland, Oregon), and as part of Lazy Oaf's Take A Break exhibition (London, United Kingdom). She is the co-founder of carnation Contemporary, a collective of emerging and mid-career artists from the Pacific Northwest championing critical contemporary art, and Well Well Projects, an artist-member gallery in Portland's Kenton neighborhood. In 2025, she was featured in Create! Magazine Issue #49 and is currently represented by Chefas Projects.

ARTWORK

INSTALLATION IMAGES

© CHEFAS PROJECTS
Photo credit: Mario Gallucci