Piles, Stacks, Lumps & Mounds - Adam Frezza & Terri Chiao

Piles, Stacks, Lumps & Mounds
A group exhibition curated by CHIAOZZA
Presented by Sight Unseen for NYC x Design

On View
May 15 – May 31, 2017
Canal Street Market
265 Canal Street, New York City
Market Hours:
Mon – Wed: 11AM – 7PM
Thurs – Sat: 11AM – 8PM
Sun: 11AM – 6PM

Piles, Stacks, Lumps & Mounds invites 21 artists and designers to explore the struggle of form to become something. A non-distinct shape holds almost all of the potential, strive and will to manifest itself into another thing. Piles, stacks, lumps and mounds have the ability to suggest a particular function while recognizing their innate formlessness.

The accumulation of matter is how all things are allowed to take shape. Every form is unique and distinct from one another, holding its own space within the universe. Forms can vary infinitely and can even be invisible. Each form exists within its own struggle for survival and lies somewhere between creation and extinction. The mass or quantity of something that has gradually gathered or been acquired is simultaneously frittering away. The exhibition Piles, Stacks, Lumps & Mounds attempts to catch a static glimpse of different artists’ varying accumulated masses in all their glory.

We love the prompt of Piles, Stacks, Lumps & Mounds as the instigation to create an object. The innate impulse to build something can be inspired by the inevitability of a pile of laundry, the care and precision of a stack of stones on a trail, the flippancy of a lump of detritus on the subway platform, or the efficiency in a mound of dirt made from an anthill. Language would have us believe that formlessness has no character, is immature and unrefined, yet we see distinctive shapeliness and elegant gestures in a simple and considered mass. This exhibit compiles a series of playful, challenging, and intriguing forms created by some of our favorite artists working across a variety of disciplines.

Adam Frezza & Terri Chiao
Marfa, 2015
Acrylic, cotton fiber, and granulated silica on paper pulp
13 x 8 x 8"

Adams Puryear
Vessel Study, 2016
Pottery, polymeric substance, color
6 x 7 x 5" (varies over time)

Andrew Casto
Assemblage 138, 2017
Ceramic, fur, gold luster
8 x 6 x 5.5"

Bari Ziperstein
Stacked Heads, 2014
Stoneware, glaze, decals
8 x 8 x 12"

Brent Owens
Plasma Heap, 2017
Wood, acrylic paint, hardware
18 x 11 x 16"

Chen Chen & Kai Williams
Moonmilk Shard, 2016
Cement, steel stand
27 x 13 x 6" (includes steel stand)

Dan Lam
Make Sure You Get My Good Side, 2017
Polyurethane foam, acrylic on wood panel
13 x 11 x 5"

David B. Smith
American Dream Fragment #1, 2017
Digitally woven cotton, polyester, thread
11 x 8 x 8"

Haruna Kawai
Two Points Supporting Blue Sphere, 2017
Styrofoam, wood, plastic band
28 x 25 x 25 cm

Jason Kachadourian
Portrait of Domestic Space (Detail #001), 2017
Wood and paint
8 x 2 x 12"

Joey Watson
Boli Oracle, 2017
Pigmented porcelain, glaze, silly putty, quartz
10 x 10 x 12"

Joy Drury Cox
Multi-Use Copy Paper Stacks (1:4 Scale), 2017
Copy paper
Dimensions variable

Kymia Nawabi
Coalesced Grandeur, 2017
Acrylic, clay, glitter and string
12 x 6 x 4"

Lisa Iglesias
Prepositions, 2017
Ocean worn asphalt, crystals grown on asphalt, paperweight (2017);
Rocks, spray paint, concrete, acrylic (2013);
Plastic figure of a business man with salt crystals in concrete, gouache (2016)
Dimensions variable