Slag & RX is pleased to present Amusement parks and ice cream, a solo exhibition by LA-based artist, Chaz Guest.

I first met Chaz Guest when I interviewed him for Cultured magazine. Since then, we’ve explored Tokyo together, wandering through Ueno and discussing his deep passion for Japan. Guest moves fluidly between cultures, blending calligraphic abstraction with social realism and heritage with innovation. His latest body of work, Amusement parks and ice cream, excavates memory with an acute sense of place, summoning the textures of his Philadelphia childhood. Here, nostalgia is not a melancholic retreat but a celebratory act—an assertion of joy, resilience, and the endurance of Black culture.

The ice cream truck, a persistent symbol of fleeting pleasure, became embedded in American culture in the early 20th century. Within Black communities, it was more than an indulgence—it was a moment of reprieve amid systemic oppression, a small but significant portal to happiness. Guest transforms this motif into a meditation on memory and reconciliation, exploring how the simplest experiences shape identity and community. In Mr. Softee (2023), the truck’s presence is both a beacon of delight and an emblem of transience, encapsulating nostalgia’s paradox. His compositions possess a visceral tactility, pulling the viewer into an intimate yet expansive narrative.

In A prayer on Millick Street (2025), Guest deepens his reflection. A Black priest stands in quiet contemplation, his downcast gaze drawing the viewer into a private moment of faith and introspection. His stance recalls a child’s perception of adults as towering, unknowable figures—an interplay of reverence and distance. This shifting perspective imbues the work with layered meaning: it is personal and historical, a meditation on spiritual refuge and the weight of inherited memory. The solemnity of the figure, juxtaposed with Guest’s dynamic brushwork, aligns his practice with the lineage of Noah Davis, the Ashcan School, and Jacob Lawrence—artists who did not merely depict Black life but infused their subjects with lived history, presence, and humanity.

Guest’s exploration of memory resonates with Calida Rawles ’Away with the tides at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, a meditation on Miami’s Overtown—a historically Black neighborhood erased by highway expansion. Rawles ’depictions of Black bodies submerged in water evoke themes of presence and erasure, much like Guest’s reclamation of fleeting joys within a broader historical framework. Both artists engage with impermanence, reminding us that even when people and places are physically erased, they persist in the collective consciousness.

Philadelphia’s history—shaped by Black labor, migration, and cultural innovation—permeates Guest’s work. His paintings insist that moments of rest, play, and celebration are not just personal recollections but historical affirmations. He places children at the center of his compositions, not as symbols of innocence but as dynamic figures of agency, curiosity, and wonder. Their world—ice cream trucks, amusement parks, and the ordinary ecstasies of childhood—becomes a testament to survival and self- definition.

Like Guest, my work bridges Japan and America, focusing on abstraction and perspective to reconstruct memory. We are passionate about how space, architecture, and gesture shape narrative—how images, like recollections, can be both precise and fluid. Guest’s gestural mark-making collapses personal and collective memory, rendering childhood neither idyllic nor lost, but a site of transformation. His paintings expand memory beyond the frame, making it almost tangible—cinematic in movement and rich with lived experience.

Ultimately, Amusement parks and ice cream is an act of preservation. Guest captures ephemeral moments and ensures they are not forgotten but continually reimagined. His work does not just recall the past; it engages in an ongoing dialogue about how memory shapes the present and the future. In an era where cultural histories are under threat, Guest’s paintings stand as a luminous record of joy, resilience, and life in America. This is not just an exhibition—it is a declaration that these stories matter, that they endure, and that they will never be erased.”

(Text by Amadour)