Christopher Chiappa and Tamar Ettun Exhibition

Maiden Lane Exhibition Space

This event has ended.

Art-in-Buildings presents two new exhibitions opening in the lobby of 125 Maiden Lane, featuring works by Christopher Chiappa and Tamar Ettun.

Christopher Chiappa’s installation The Search for Church is a site-responsive iteration of a longstanding project that began in 2012, the result of Chiappa’s exhaustive experimentation with color, texture, and surface on a singular form - a stool modeled after the design of the iconic Weber grill. The project began with a utilitarian aim: the artist, having recently moved to a new, empty studio, was in need of a table and chair, and decided to make an object that could serve as both. The project has since grown to include over 100 elements, all of them unique. Some are made with simple and solid colors, others reveal years of coating, sanding and re-coating in enamel paint and resin. Although each object is a standalone work, their presentation in a display unit built by the artist creates an opportunity to view them together as one large wall relief and demonstrates the seemingly endless variations possible to this simple structure. The scale of the presentation - and their highly visible position in the atrium facing Maiden Lane - adds to their spectacle.

Tamar Ettun’s presentation, Yellow to Pink, includes a selection of the artist’s sculptures, video, and a new immersive inflatable. The objects and video in this exhibition form a mini-retrospective of the last two years of Ettun’s practice; she is now half-way through a four-year body of work, Mauve Bird with Yellow Teeth Red Feathers Green Feet and a Rose Belly, which is grounded in an exploration of trauma and empathy. Ettun developed this project with the dance company she founded, The Moving Company. Ettun and the dancers, Tina Wang, Mor Mendel, and Annabel Zoe Paran, known as Movers, create performances that explore stillness as a form of radical resistance and movement as an exercise of physical empathy. The sculptures on view are from the first year of Mauve Bird, the video, Part Yellow: Desire, is from the second year, and the inflatable is a new work that viewers can enter for a moment of respite from the hectic public spaces of Lower Manhattan. Ettun will activate the space with several performances over the run of the exhibition, beginning with Yellow to Pink during the exhibition opening. This work signifies a transition from last year’s Yellow to 2017’s Part Pink: Aggression. Parts Yellow and Pink share a similar polarity, expressed as a push and pull between the body and the abstract, the intellectual and the physical, static objects and movement-based performance. The repetition of this duality in the work results in a kind of mirroring - each object and action in Ettun’s practice is reflected in another object or action. It is an elegant closed-circuit, bringing Mauve Bird back to its core principle, empathy.

Tamar Ettun and The Moving Company will premiere Part Pink at the Bosque Fountain at Battery Park, May 24th, 6-7pm.

Christopher Chiappa, (USA, b.1970 in West Chester, PA), received his undergraduate degree from Middlebury College, VT and later attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. He has held solo exhibitions at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2014-2015); Kate Werble Gallery, NY, NY (2010, 2012, 2015-2016); Fredericks & Freiser, NY, NY (2000, 2003) and Jessica Fredericks, NY, NY (1998). His work has been exhibited at venues including Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; Museums of Bat Yam, Bat Yam, IL; Western Bridge, Seattle, WA; Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA. He lives and works in Long Island City, NY.

Tamar Ettun is a multidisciplinary artist, she is the founding director of The Moving Company. Ettun composes sculpture with people to create a sense of what she calls “handheld history” that examines the transformation of cultural and psychological narratives through the lens of personal perspectives. Ettun received her MFA from Yale University in 2010. She studied at Cooper Union in 2007, while earning her BFA from Bezalel Academy. Her exhibitions/performances include: Bryant Park, Sculpture Center, Fridman Gallery, Uppsala Museum of Art, The Watermill Center, Madison Square Park, The Knockdown Center, e-flux, The Queens Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum, Danspace Project, PERFORMA 13, PERFORMA 11, PERFORMA 09. Ettun’s fellowships and residencies including Iaspis, Franklin Furnace, The Pollock Krasner Foundation, MacDowell Fellowship, Abron’s Art Center, LMCC, Art Production Fund, RECESS, Triangle, and many others.

Art-in-Buildings is curated by Jennie Lamensdorf and sponsored by Time Equities Inc. (TEI). TEI is committed to enriching the experience of our properties through Art-in-Buildings, an innovative approach that brings contemporary art by emerging and mid-career artists to non-traditional exhibition spaces in the interest of promoting artists, expanding the audience for art, and creating a more interesting environment for our building occupants, residents, and their guests.