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time until the late Seventies, when she began increasingly to use aluminum rather than neon and plastic as the means of her expression.

Neon remains in many of Chryssa's pieces, but it is now an accent or a counterpoint, rather than the main event. Its use is for the most part linear, and is characterized by the same impressive mix of precision, emotion, and grace also evident in Chryssa's deployment of chalk or ink in her drawings on paper. 

Urban calligraphy has been Chryssa's fundamental form of expression since the white chalk drawings she did on the streets of Athens as a child. Her sculpture can be seen as drawings in space, and her natural predisposition was perhaps further inspired by the 1950's-sculpture of David Smith, as well as by the dynamic tracery of commercial neon.

The sculptures Chryssa has made for the last seven years are all substantial wall reliefs. They are made of sheet aluminum or honeycomb aluminum, painted on a single flat non-assertive color. The white, grey, green, and dark brown colors which she prefers reinforce rather than compete with the sculptures' forms. These works are fairly large, ranging from 43 x 45 x 24 inches in size, to 43 x 41 x 80 inches. 

All of the works are beautifully proportioned, energetic, complex and rich in allusion; as well as being engagingly reasoned and fully realized in every possible formal sense. Chryssa's icons of urban civilization are both contemporary and timeless. 

The real city signs with which Chryssa begins (she makes hundreds of sketches both in the street and in the studio before a group of sculptures begin to evolve) are very New York, very American, but their kind can be found today throughout the "civilized" world. The character of these signs is different at night, when the bright ribbons of neon implant their message directly into consciousness, from during the day, when their heavy metal presence engages passerby in games of recognition; and both these forms of address have their equivalent in Chryssa's icons. 

The energy of Chryssa's signs echoes the cacophonous overlapping of light and shadow, positive and negative space of their sources on the street. The English letters and Chinese characters are only particular enough in their references to direct the viewer to the realms of experience to which Chryssa alludes. They are talismans of both the world of Chryssa's imagination and of the zeitgeist of contemporary urban reality.

Chryssa believes that readability is not important. "What is important," she says, "is to do work of my time." The sense of familiarity one experiences in the work does not depend on the simple recognition of the letters belonging to the words "ice cream" or "bar grill," but rather derives from Chryssa's ability to convey essentials. These works evoke--and are in themselves--archetypal images that are distinctly twentieth century.

Chryssa watches urban signs, dissects them and puts new signs together from their most essential elements. She adds drawings made in the studio to those she does in the streets. She then orders aluminum sheets, and begins cutting directly into the metal to transform her calligraphy into three dimensions. She develops the sculpture surrounded by drawings--some forty drawings can relate to a given sculpture--but once Chryssa starts working with the metal, she determines the evolution of the piece in that material alone. Enlargements of sign words are cut into metal shapes, and then these shapes--negative and positive, linear and planar--are assembled into a new kind of sign.

All the recent works are painted aluminum, but those that [[cutoff]] plane and in overall three-dimensional depth than the "Chinese" works. The former are made from aluminum sheets and rods, and have a grid-like composition. The later consist of curving shapes cut out of honeycomb aluminum, one to two inches thick. These boldly calligraphic works are more baroque and more sensuous in every way. Some pieces incorporate curvilinear strips of neon in one or several colors whose rhythm is controlled by a timer; others have static neon. Several sculptures are constructed of aluminum alone.

[[image]] 
Chryssa, Cityscape, Mott Street No. 1, 1980-82, Honeycomb aluminum, metallic paint 80" x 14" x 80", Courtesy Leo Castelli Gallery.

Ice Cream Parlor is one of a series grid-and-planar wall reliefs in which silhouetted letters are cut out off planes and 1/8 inch aluminum. The negative planes and spaces are as important as the white aluminum planes, and shadow adds further formal and psychological complexity to the piece. Yellow and green neon, flashing sequentially, modulate the carefully unfolding forms throughout, playing off against the compact density of the structure. 

Bar/Grill is a relief of positive and negative, outline and silhouette, made of aluminum, painted brown, arranged in tiers of planes angled out from the wall like shelves, and three strips of red neon. The letters are drawn in solid metal, accented by neon, or are negative shapes circumscribed by a ribbon of metal. Other layers of letters are cut out from each other, and some words fold out from the planes rather than having been cut independently. In this work the neon is musical in its inflection, but actually static. It fills up the space between the planes with linear shadows and a soft red glow.

In the silver Mott Street, like all Chryssa's works inspired by Chinese calligraphy, the gestural characters bow to one another in a ritual dance, anchored by a central spine which also activates them. Florescent lights both on top and behind the honeycombed aluminum establish an alternate definition of the forms, making them boldly emblematic.

The formal richness of Chryssa's works depends on a cubist overlayering and ambiguity, and on repetitions and permutations of forms. The strength of the work comes from the clarity of the overall image. These sculptures are poetic emblems of urban reality which remain in the mind's eye--and as a touchingly human experience--long after they have been encountered.