Label Text:
After settling in New York in 1955, Chryssa became fascinated with the lights and letters of Times Square and with the visual interplay of mass communication and society. Her work, however, is related to early Minimal Art, in
her concentration on impersonal forms and colors including the square and print letters. Like Chillida or Wilke, Chryssa plays with the ambiguity of visual and verbal signs. In Study of Light, she refers to the ubiquitous visual and verbal sensory overload of the big city. By scattering the letters throughout the plane of the square, she resists the expectation that letters provide sensible verbal information. As a result, Chryssa’s letters evoke a purely visual sensation. Moreover, the artist creates very little contrast between the letters and the background, substituting the visual coherence of white paint for the verbal coherence of a text. Only light brings the monochromatic surface to life—it turns the letters into barriers that create shadows and transform the seemingly flat surface into a spatial object. BJ
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2007.18 |
