Lot Essay
Positive-Negative is Chryssa’s cool blue elegy to her favored medium. The work functions as an artistic articulation of Chryssa’s disposition towards creative production, which she defines as the “cool mind.” Rejecting the premise of Surrealism and Dada and dismissive of the contemporaneous Happenings attempting to bridge art and life, Chryssa seeks to “go beyond the limits of technology and of the material” while working independently of both (Chryssa, quoted in M. Warnock, “Electric Affinities,” Artforum, vol. 63, no. 1, September 2023). Privileging the iterative procedures alienated from manual production inherent in the manufacture of neon sculpture, an art form which she developed independently upon arrival to New York in 1959, she identifies iteration with intentionality, rejecting “automatism of every sort or unconscious overt drives of every sort” (Chryssa, quoted in op. cit.). Mastering the difficult technical feat of designing intricate forms which did not block the flow of neon gas, Chryssa boldly stated that “WITH THE NEW MEDIA A NEW APPROACH TO THE TERM ‘ORIGINAL THOUGHT’ IS ESTABLISHED” (Chryssa, quoted in op. cit.). This novel approach to art proved the inspiration for both the Pop and later neon artists.
Born and educated in Athens, Chryssa moved to Paris in 1953 at the age of 20, where she was first introduced to Surrealism. She then moved to New York by way of San Francisco, becoming an American citizen and beginning to produce work inspired by the city’s energetic atmosphere. A significant and influential figure in the 1960s New York art scene, Chryssa showed extensively in the United States and Europe, with solo exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Musée d’Art Modern de la Ville de Paris, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the above institutions along with the Hirshorn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Tate Modern.
Born and educated in Athens, Chryssa moved to Paris in 1953 at the age of 20, where she was first introduced to Surrealism. She then moved to New York by way of San Francisco, becoming an American citizen and beginning to produce work inspired by the city’s energetic atmosphere. A significant and influential figure in the 1960s New York art scene, Chryssa showed extensively in the United States and Europe, with solo exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Musée d’Art Modern de la Ville de Paris, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the above institutions along with the Hirshorn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Tate Modern.