Unclassied Gesture (2025)
Mixed media, mail intervention, bumper stickers, digital correspondence
In Unclassied Gesture, Christopher DeLoach orchestrates a distributed performance at the intersection of bureaucracy, pop culture, and public will. The work consists of a mass mailing of custom bumper stickers—each emblazoned with the phrase “RELEASE THE FILES”—sent individually to every sitting member of the United States Congress. Accompanied by an image of “Clippy,” Microsoft’s once-ubiquitous digital assistant, the gesture transforms nostalgia for obsolete interfaces into a vehicle of civic address. Through the framework of administrative language and familiar design, Unclassied Gesture operates as both institutional critique and cultural mirror. The artist situates the work within traditions of mail art, participatory democracy, and conceptual humor, invoking the aesthetics of governmental communication while subverting its opacity. By mobilizing an object as commonplace as a bumpersticker, the project foregrounds the tension between mass expression and bureaucratic containment—the civic desire to know, to see, to be acknowledged. The title itself—Unclassied Gesture—suggests a paradox: an action seeking visibility within a system dened by withholding. Neither activism nor parody, the work exists in a liminal state between earnest request and conceptual performance, asking what forms of transparency remain possible within contemporary institutions of power.
Christopher Michael DeLoach
Born, Brooklyn NY
Living/Working, Los Angeles CA
Solo
09/2024 No One Rides Free Cruise Control Gallery, Cambria CA
Group
2025 “Rocks” MARTA , LA CA
2024 NPU Art Show 3 non-Plus-Ultra, LA CA
2023 NPU Art Show 2 non-Plus-Ultra, LA CA
2020. GROUP SHOW Felix Kulpa Gallery, Santa Cruz CA
2019 Anniversary Moisturizer Gallery, Gainesville FL
2019 GROUP SHOW IDIO Gallery, Queens, NY
2019 SKAST 8. Omni Commons, Oakland CA
2018 “Plant Life” Wrigley Building, Santa Cruz, CA
2017 “My Proud Flowers” Lupulo, Santa Cruz, CA
2016 Spring Show Studio 217 , Santa Cruz, CA
2015. “Portraits” Studio 217 , Santa Cruz, CA
2010 “Grand Opening” Trinity Project, NY
2010 24 Hour Performance Robert Goff Gallery, NY
RESIDENCE
2010 Preserved Instincts, Brooklyn
Selected Copy 2020-2025
Coltrane Estate 2020
Alone 2022
Jumbo’s Clown Room 2022
Dirty Hit Records et’ Interscope 2023
FutureWise 2023
L. Kramar et’ Secretely Canadian 2023
Charli <3 2024
Supreme 2024
Cafe Tropical 2024
Silver Lake Lounge 2024
