Steel Musings: Joseph Chichirillo New Sculpture

This new steel sculpture from Joseph Chichirillo emerges out of the pandemic with the artist's desire to change his working methods, with the ways he deals with process and material. "I have never been interested in making sculpture that is purely architectural or organic in look or feel. I have been searching for different materials & methods to express my thoughts. My sculpture is conceptual. My ideas become real as the piece is built.”

Chirchirillo has been creating sculptures since the early 1970s. After attending college in New York and Arizona, he moved to the New York Metro area and settled in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1979. He was part of the first wave of artists moving to this outpost across the Hudson, building the budding art scene there.

In the early 1980s, he was involved with artists from lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who were putting on large shows in abandoned buildings and blighted urban lots. These artist-run shows, such as the “Monument Redefined” and the “Terminal Show”, were huge public events. The Terminal Show took place in the abandoned Bush Terminal, made famous as a major shipping center for material in both WWI and WWII. In true gorilla art form, “Monument Redefined” was organized in a lot in Red Hook on the Brooklyn waterfront. Both received tremendous attention from viewers and critics alike.

At this time Mr. Chirchirillo’s work was reviewed in Art Forum, Art in America, Vanity Fair, and on numerous occasions in the New York Times. His work at the time was the basis for a 1986 NEA fellowship, and corporations such as KPMG Peat Marwick and Mutual Benefit Life purchased pieces for their collections in these years.

In the 1990s he began to experiment with kinetic sculpture. Looking for a way to examine the similarities and contrasts between the natural and mechanical world. During these years he had several successful one-man shows in Manhattan and large firms such as Cleary Gottlieb and Skadden Arps purchased pieces for their offices.

Pushing his ideas even further, he began creating sculptures based on cycles in nature. For the last 10 years, he has been working on his “Sculpture Systems” series. The aim of this work is to create “nature machines” that mimic natural processes.

Since 1997, Chichirillo has organized and curated the North Bennington Outdoor Sculpture Show, and annual town-wide sculpture exposition that includes 30 sculptors, some national.