Chiaozza (Adam Frezza & Terri Chiao)
We are pleased to announce the gallery’s second solo presentation of CHIAOZZA, entitled Cascades and Crescendos.
Working under the collaborative name CHIAOZZA, artists Adam Frezza and Terri Chiao’s creations inhabit the bright intersection where the aesthetics of work meet play, where color theory melds with surface texture, and where pure imaginations coallesses into object.
The duo is best known for their brilliantly patterned and colored paper pulp sculptures, such as the Lump Nubbin series. These small but impactful daubs are examples of the pure joy that can emerge from collaborative interactions. Each shape, akin to wild fantastical plant forms, contains an idiosyncratic sense of self, and yet clearly is part of a larger family of creations.
In addition to these sculptures-in-the-round, CHIAOZZA have started to explore several series of wall-based artworks. Still made in painted paper pulp, or painted wood slats, these new works continue to hover between painting and sculpture. Though they are wall-mounted, and present a new sense of frontality, they are still explored from every angle. The bright coloring of each form includes their interiors and backs that are not necessarily available for viewers to directly see. This bathes the surrounding wall in additional, albeit subtle, hues, making the work complete only once it is installed.
The titles of these new series, “Cascades” and “Crescendos”, indicate what is most intrinsic about them. Motion is the central aspect of these sculptures. Blobular forms ooze over and around themselves. Angular wood slats climb diagonally up and down the wall, as if a stained glass window suddenly decided to go for a walk. Seen together the wall sculptures offer a dazzlingly visual array of momentum and fun.