Slow Growth

Uprise Art is pleased to present Slow Growth, an exhibition of works by Adam Frezza and Terri Chiao, the artist duo collectively known as CHIAOZZA. This collection of paintings on linen and wall-based painted paper pulp sculptures emerge from CHIAOZZA’s enduring interest in exploring and abstracting the forms of natural and everyday objects such as plants, vessels, rocks, and flowers.

As collaborators for over a decade, CHIAOZZA has developed a unique visual language that carries across a range of techniques employed in their practice from sculpture to drawing to collage, and painting. This language includes a playful approach to form, color, composition, shape, and material that is rooted in a deep reverence and awe for nature and the impermanence of life’s fleeting moments.

Using highly pigmented gouache, CHIAOZZA’s Bouquet Paintings break from the considerations of gravity and construction that are ever-present in the artists’ sculpture practice. In the picture plane, bulbous, spindly, stout, and sprouting forms grow and interact freely, creating compositions that would be more challenging in sculpture space. In these works, the artists are able to draw a more explicit connection to the inner consciousness, by more directly mirroring the flow of thoughts and feelings through the immediacy of pencil and paint on linen. The rectilinear space of painted stretched linen with unpainted linen borders provides its own framing device and allows fullness and emptiness to seek harmony within the composition. In the scenes depicted, various arrangements of bouquets, vessels, and objects on flat discs reference forms and display methods of past sculptural series from the artists’ oeuvre.

In this body of work, each painting and sculpture is a way to carve tranquility from the wildness around us and provide an opportunity for meditation in the present moment.

In contrast to the sometimes lively compositions of their Bouquet Paintings, CHIAOZZA’s Shrines To Nothingness offer a quiet, sculptural counterpart. The shelf-like wall sculptures are left intentionally empty, exalting the horizon plane as a space of contemplation and potential, simultaneously honoring nothing and everything. Light bounces off the highly pigmented areas of the artwork, reflecting the colors onto the surrounding walls and casting an aura that shifts with the changing light of the day. The shrines offer a moment of pause to experience the soft, healing properties of color and light while literally holding an open physical space for reflection.

In this body of work, each painting and sculpture is a way to carve tranquility from the wildness around us and provide an opportunity for meditation in the present moment. Slow Growth reminds us of the strength that can be built over time when we breathe and approach the world with slowness and gratitude.

Join us for an Opening Reception on Thursday, May 18th and an Artist Talk on Monday, May 22nd at Uprise Art, hosted during NYCxDESIGN's 2023 Festival.

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