Study for the The Gates to Times Square

In 1954, Chryssa relocated to San Francisco for a brief period, where she studied at the California School of Fine Arts, eventually making her way to New York City. There she became fascinated by symbols and was attracted to everything related to communication, language and writing: from simple letters in newspapers, to names on building entrances, to metal signs outdoors and later to neon billboards. In the early 1960s, she began her compositions using letters, isolating individual words from a group of words and then single letters or groups of letters, transforming them into thematic plastic shapes. She exclusively used letters from the Latin alphabet. She started working on her first "neon boxes," creating compositions with delicate neon tubes, and "analysing" letters in different ways. During the period from 1964 to 1966, Chryssa isolated herself and worked diligently on her composition, "The Gates of Times Square," a artwork that absorbed all her physical and emotional energy. She creates Studies for the artwork, in each of which she isolates an element from the composition-matrix, making it autonomous. The final drawing structured in the shape of the first letter of the alphabet, A, is composed of stainless steel, Plexiglas, fragment-forms of billboards worked in cast aluminium and neon, drafts on paper wrapped in rolls. The choice of the letter A is a tribute to America, to the dazzling photochemistry of the New York nightscape, to the American lifestyle of advertising, unbridled consumerism and mass communication.