“Chryssa & New York” made its final stop on its national tour at Wrightwood 659. A collaborative effort between the Menil Collection and the Dia Foundation, the exhibition and catalog highlight this lesser known, yet highly innovative, artist with a collection of sculptures, paintings and prints that spans all three floors of Wrightwood 659. The collection focuses on works created from the 1950s to the 1970s. It is during this period that Chryssa made the influential works that positioned her as one of the first neon light artists as well as an early Pop artist.

        Language and text are common threads among all the works in the exhibition. Chryssa grew up in Nazi-occupied Greece and was imprisoned on three separate occasions. In several articles there is reference made to messages and slogans the Greek resistance would write at night on the walls. This is considered one of the catalysts for her interest in physical text and symbols. When Chryssa traveled to New York after WWII, she was drawn to the advertisements in Times Square. Advertisements and printed media have vastly different motives in their use of text, size, brightness, or mass distribution to grasp attention and occupy space. In Chryssa’s work, the mediums of commercial art are used to examine the use of text and other physical forms of language. She sculpts, prints, and shapes the materials to get attention and to occupy space, but there is no message or motive being sold.

        In her earlier pieces, Chryssa examines the physical structure of language using light and shadow. A series of mixed media works are sculptural but have a drawing quality in their use of light to create shapes like triangles and arrows. Projection #2 requires light to produce a shadow cast from several small, white, T-shaped forms mounted on a board. The shadow creates a visible pattern of three triangles. Without the light, the flat top of each piece blends into the background of the board. These subtle works use light and shadow in a clever way—hiding or revealing shapes depending on the direction the light is coming from.

        For her Newspaper series, Chryssa uses discarded newspaper plates to create a series of large canvas works.. Her repetition of image and text, along with the appropriation of commercial media, connects this work to the emerging Pop art movement of the 1960s. By repurposing commercial materials like newspaper plates, Chryssa strips away the message from the medium. She uses oversized canvas and stamps the plates in a tight grid pattern, taking the temporary and mobile medium of newspaper and making it into a large piece of art, subverting the original purpose of the text and imagery.

        Chryssa began working with neon in 1962, creating large-scale glowing sculptures using shapes that resemble letters and symbols. These neon works break up the concept of language into elements of shape and time. For example, the blinking of Study #2 is timed so that the neon is illuminated for far less time than it remains dark. When illuminated, the shapes resemble letters, but they do not form any recognizable words. When not illuminated, it’s mechanical aspects are apparent and its physical qualities become the focus. In a lecture given in 1968 at New York University, Chryssa explains,

        “I feel strongly about media and most of all about the independence of my light sculptures from their technology. What I mean is the transformers will eventually wear out. …Fortunately, there is the sun and the moon, day, and night. Without electricity my sculpture will still survive.”

        The Gates to Times Square is a culmination of all the previous styles with elements of neon light, steel shapes, clear Plexiglas, and paper. It is the largest work in the exhibition and considered Chryssa’s magnum opus. All the materials used in the 10 foot tall sculpture represent language as a physical object. She forms the neon and steel into shapes resembling fractured words and letters, turning them into an art object rather than conveying a defined message. The abstract shapes of the words remain tied to the idea of language. Unlike a neon sign on a building, which is usually designed to have a clear meaning, there is no message, only form.

         Although the neon pieces are the flashiest in the exhibition, the heroes of the show are the more subtle works where Chryssa’s thought process is apparent. Her early shadow works are more delicate in their study of language The physical letter blocks the light and creates a shadow that emphasizes the shape. Whether being illuminated from within with neon bulbs, or blocking an external light source, light is a visual metaphor for message or meaning in language.

        Chryssa also examines language through a lens of her Greek heritage. The Gates of Times Square lends its structure to Greek architecture. Moreover, her Cycladic Books are conversant with ancient Greek art. The Cycladic Books are the earliest works on view in the top floor gallery. The plaster sculptures resemble books in the same way early Cycladic figures resemble people. They have a form that conveys the general shape of a person but lack definition and detail. This paring down of the shape to the symbolic marks the starting point for Chryssa’s examination of language. These books are not books–they don’t have pages or text. Instead, they are a symbolic representation of a book.

        In retrospect, Chryssa’s work is revolutionary in how it conveys complicated ideas regarding language and communication. Conceptually, her viewpoint on language aligns with Marshall McLuhan’s theories in Understanding Media written in 1964. Chryssa’s extraction of the form of words from the message they had once conveyed makes a cohesive visual representation of McLuhan’s most quoted phrase, “The medium is the message.”

        Wrightwood 659 has often exhibited artists that have been overlooked and are being rediscovered. When learning about a lesser-known artist it is easy to regard that oversight as being unjust. Misogyny is undeniably ingrained in art history, and it is entirely possible that had Chryssa been male making the same work, we would not be discovering it now. Being lesser known until recently, although a huge aspect of her life’s story, is in no way the most important part of her work as a whole. Chryssa was an artist ahead of her time. Her Newspaper series has been recognized as being highly influential to Andy Warhol’s screenprint works. She was also on the forefront of neon art, opening the medium up for artists like Dan Flavin.

        When looking back at her career, her influence makes sense. Chryssa was there with the heavy hitters in the 1960s showing in several shows at MoMA and having a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum. Despite these major accomplishments, she was described as temperamental and moody and given a reputation of being difficult, something that would not make a difference if she were a male artist. The Menil Collection and the Dia Foundation have brought Chryssa back into the conversation and we can be inspired to dig deeper and find more underrated, overlooked artists.

Rebecca Memoli is a Chicago-based photographer and curator. She received her BFA from Pratt Institute and her MFA in Photography from Columbia College. Her work has been featured in several national and international group shows.