Chinese Earth

Since 1957 I have worked in fragments. Entire areas of my newspaper paintings were covered with fragments of printed material. I repeat these fragments and in their entity I reach reality … Diagrams occur between the conscious and the unconscious, instinctive directions.

Chryssa

Greek-American artist Chryssa’s interest in words and typography is much more visual than literary. As a long-time New Yorker, she was struck by the immediate visual impact and ubiquity of advertising text. With Chinese Earth, the artist revisits the experimental technique seen in her much earlier Real Estate Pages, in which she used rubber stamps made from the press plates of the New York Times. In the late 1970s Chryssa began to use Chinese characters that she encountered daily in Chinatown. With these characters she found a form that is identifiable as language and yet—for her—is unreadable. Even more than the Real Estate Pages, therefore, Chinese Earth achieved the effect of text as environment that she was creating at the same time with large neon sculptures.