Angiola Churchill Labyrinth, 2022
Presented by Wook + Lattuada Gallery, Booth C16
Location: Art on Paper Main Floor
Angiola Churchill will showcase Labyrinth, in collaboration with her gallery, Wook+Lattuada.
Artist Statement:
The light and shadows within its walls fire the Imagination. Turning to my paper, glue and scissors, I fashion shapes. Directions, scale and balance come into play. Building paper walls around paper gardens has always been of Interest. It is only recently that the walls themselves have become significant. Through playful rummaging, Ideas and physical forms align. I envision a structure in which people can enter – a labyrinth comes to mind.
Entering this structure the Individual is presented with a long lateral view of a path flanked by two walls. Standing in the void between them, surrounded by both tactile and visual clues the dialogue between the individual and the structure begins. The right wall, composed of thousands of hand twisted strands, cascades down like falling rain or tears through which the light shines softly. Papers whisper quietly, sensitive to motion. On the left, the wall is a rigid, complex, see-through structure which only the eye can penetrate. These two walls. In one a sense of depth is experienced as actual space while in the other the space is experienced as a diffusion of light.
The pedestrian, lured by the path into movement, embarks on a journey moving through space in real time. The rapid capacity of vision operates at another tempo. The eye darts in and out of uninhabitable spaces- zooming into long and short distances – going places where the body cannot. These two capacities fuse to expand and intensify sensibilities.
The structure can be savored and appreciated in infinite ways through its collective parts. The Integrity of the structure and its ultimate meaning depends upon these parts. The intricacy of overlaid, repetitive pattern, cross sections of inner and outer edges, dissolving volumes and the virtual world of shadows are manipulated and fused into richly sensual relationships as familiar to us as our own bodies. Bodies formed by these characteristics into organic shapes supported by a skeletal structure as are these two walls. In this fragile network of paper where silence reigns as a potent presence, the presence within ourselves may be activated.
About the Artist:
Angiola Churchill is professor emerita of New York University and the former Head and Chair of the Department of Art and Arts Professions – 1975-2005. She was the founder and director of the New York University Studio Arts Masters Program in Venice, Italy – 1974-2006; and co-director of ICASA, the International Center for Advanced Studies in Art, 1970-1980. From 1988 to 2004, she was the adjunct professor at the Teachers College of Columbia University. Churchill has also pursued a successful career as an artist exhibiting globally. Since 1953, she has had 60 solo shows in America and elsewhere in such prestigious spaces as the Museo di Palazzo Fortuni, Venice, Italy; Palazzo di Diamonti, Ferrara, Italy; Palazzo Reale, Naples, Italy; Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, Italy; Neuberger Museum of Art, State University of New York, Purchase, New York. In addition, she has participated in more than 54 group shows, biennials and art fairs.