Artist’s Statement

Christopher Chiappa was born in 1970 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He obtained his undergraduate degree from Middlebury College in 1993 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1998. 

Chiappa’s debut solo exhibition was at Jessica Fredericks Gallery in 1998. Titled It Feels So Good to Be a Lie, the show was reviewed by Ken Johnson for The New York Times. In 1999, Chiappa was commissioned by Camel to design a limited edition cigarette pack along with Damien Hirst and Nan Goldin. This project was reviewed in both ARTnews and New York Magazine. In 2000, Chiappa held his second solo show As Funny as Brain Cancer at Fredericks Freiser Gallery. The exhibition was reviewed by TimeOut New York. His third solo show It’s Much Worse Than You Think with Fredericks Freiser in 2002 was reviewed by Stephanie Cash for Art in America. 

Chiappa stopped actively exhibiting from 2002 to 2010, but his work was included in In Full View at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York in 2003, Framing Exposure – Process and Politics at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2005, Multiplex, Western Bridge, Seattle, Washington in 2008, and Now/Then: A Journey in Collecting Contemporary Art At Wake Forest University, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston Salem, North Carolina in 2009.   

In January of 2010, Chiappa presented a new solo project, The Knife Factory, at Art Los Angeles Contemporary. For this project the artist assembled and distributed maquettes of kitchen knives while sitting in an art fair booth wrapped entirely in black plastic. The piece was reviewed by Christopher Knight for the Critic’s Notebook of the Los Angeles Times. This project was followed by the artist’s first solo exhibition in eight years, High Fructose Corn Syrup at Kate Werble Gallery. 

Chiappa exhibited new work at the NADA Art Fair Miami Beach 2010 and was included in a three-person exhibition at the François Ghebaly in Los Angeles in January of 2011. McMiracles, (2002), one of Chiappa’s pieces exhibited at François Ghebaly, was featured on NBC news in April, 2011. Chiappa also participated in a group show titled The Light Show, at Kate Werble Gallery, in Spring 2011; Chiappa’s pieces included in the show were mentioned in The New Yorker review of the show. The artist will participate in an upcoming group show at M Gallery, in Louisville, KY in 2011. His work is in the collection of Wake Forest University, The True Collection, The Margulies Collection and numerous other private collections. He currently lives and works in Long Island City, NY and is represented by Kate Werble Gallery, New York. 

He is represented by Kate Werble Gallery in New York City.

Artist’s Links

website:       

gallery links:   http://www.katewerblegallery.com/index.php?/artists/christopher-chiappa/