Chain Forest — I Am Letting Time Do Its Thing is a series of meditations on the nature of the mind, aging, and the ever-changing body, captured through intimate photographs on 35mm and medium-format film. In this body of work, Júlia Standovár explores the continuous flow of thought and the emotional weight we carry, using images of heavy chains laid across rural landscapes in upstate New York to visualize entanglements of mind, memory, and the shifting body. Chains, a recurring element in her practice since Kinky Concrete, represent looping thoughts and the forest-like sensation of becoming lost within one’s own mind.

Creating Chain Forest holds a sculptural sentiment. Each site-specific composition lived briefly in the physical world before being frozen in time through photography, shifting from three- to two-dimensional form. Her process is partially inspired by Ana Mendieta, whose transdisciplinary earthworks resonate with Standovár’s evolving relationship to the body’s presence and representation in natural space through artificial objects, slipping between sculpture and photography. Poetic titles invite viewers into internal “forests” of their own, offering moments for personal reflection.

This introspection takes an absurdist turn in Egg Prices, which began with an existential moment in a Brooklyn grocery store. Standing in that storied egg aisle sparked the Chain Forest series, revealing how mundane triggers can prompt deep reflection and how meaning shifts with age and circumstance. Now in her thirties, Standovár sees the egg as a symbol charged with economic, political, and bodily resonance, particularly within the contexts of Hungary and the United States. As one slips into the forest and stands before the egg aisle, Standovár invites us to linger where memory, symbolism, and the quietly absurd entangle.

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Landon Wilson