Angiola Churchill

A Labyrinth
September 13 - December 10, 2022
New York

Angiola Riva Churchill

A LABYRINTH, 2005

Sculpture made from paper strips

Light and shadows within walls fire the Imagination. Turning to my paper, glue and scissors, I fashion shapes. Directions, scale and balance come into play. Building paper walls around paper gardens has always been of Interest. Through playful rummaging, Ideas and physical forms align. I envision a structure in which people can enter - a labyrinth comes to mind.

Entering this structure the Individual is presented with a long lateral view of a path flanked by two walls. Standing in the void between them, surrounded by both tactile and visual clues the dialogue between the individual and the structure begins. The right wall, composed of thousands of hand twisted strands, cascades down like falling rain or tears through which the light shines softly. Papers whisper quietly, sensitive to motion. On the left, the wall is a rigid, complex, see-through structure which only the eye can penetrate. In one a sense of depth is experienced as actual space while in the other the space is experienced as a diffusion of light.

The pedestrian, lured by the path into movement, embarks on a journey moving through space in real time. The rapid capacity of vision operates at another tempo. The eye darts in and out of uninhabitable spaces- zooming into long and short distances - going places where the body cannot. These two capacities fuse to expand and intensify sensibilities.

The structure can be savored and appreciated in infinite ways through its collective parts. The Integrity of the structure and its ultimate meaning depends upon these parts. The intricacy of overlaid, repetitive pattern, cross sections of inner and outer edges, dissolving volumes and the virtual world of shadows are manipulated and fused into richly sensual relationships as familiar to us as our own bodies. Bodies formed by these characteristics into organic shapes supported by a skeletal structure as are these two walls. In this fragile network of paper where silence reigns as a potent presence, the presence within ourselves may be activated.