Angelo Vasta & SiSi Chen

Dec 10- Jan 19, 2025

View Works

The Moon Dancers

Opening Reception: December 10, 2024, from 6 to 8 PM
On view until January 19, 2025

Tappeto Volante Projects is proud to present The Moon Dancers, a two-person exhibition featuring ceramics by SiSi Chen and works on paper by Angelo Vasta. Both Brooklyn-based artists explore the nuances of their dual cultural heritage—Chen's Chinese and Vasta's Italian—through contemporary practices that reinterpret memory, tradition, and identity. This exhibition invites viewers into a rich dialogue on myth, transformation, and the deeply personal narratives that connect the past to the present.

SiSi Chen's ceramics are rooted in the storytelling traditions of myth and folklore, where cultural symbols are transformed into vessels that examine resilience, balance, and belonging. Central to her work are the Moon Rabbit, a figure of immortality, and Guardian Lions, protectors of energy and harmony. Chen reimagines these motifs through modular, geometric forms that serve as literal and metaphorical thresholds, reflecting the fluidity of identity in a globalized world.

Her practice further reclaims and reframes narratives of historically maligned feminine figures, such as Huli Jing, the fox spirit, or the Greek sirens, traditionally cast as destructive forces. Through Chen's vision, these figures emerge as powerful symbols of agency and empowerment. Her intricately painted hexagonal vessels, each face bearing a unique story, merge ancient mythology with contemporary storytelling, inviting tactile engagement and connection.

The Guardian Lions series explores the duality of these iconic protectors: the male safeguarding material spaces and the female guarding spiritual realms. Through their symbolic forms, Chen examines themes of convergence and balance, drawing on the hexagon's significance in Chinese culture as a symbol of harmony between heaven, earth, and the four winds. Layers of imagery—tarot cards, constellations, moon cycles, koi fish, dual tigers, and mythical rabbits—animate her hand-built vessels, creating a dynamic interplay of structure, movement, and transformation.

Angelo Vasta's works on paper delve into the intimate and the personal, exploring self-representation and connection. His drawings capture moments of domestic quietude and tenderness rendered in vivid Mediterranean hues. While autobiographical, Vasta's works transcend specificity, becoming universal meditations on vulnerability, belonging, and the subtle resonance of the everyday. Vasta's works on paper embody a deep connection to movement, light, and the textures of life, rooted in his Italian heritage and lifelong passion for dance. Trained as a dance filmmaker, self-taught artist Angelo Vasta brings a cinematographer's eye to his visual art, capturing fleeting moments of motion and emotion with a delicate yet dynamic touch. His figures seem to dance across the surface of his compositions, stepping into a world where motion is eternal, and memory is alive.

Building on traditions of figural representation, Vasta positions his work within a lineage that includes artists like Henri Matisse, celebrated for his richly textured depictions of domestic life, and David Hockney, whose explorations of queer identity and relationships find echoes in Vasta's themes. Another key influence is Dang Xuan Hoa, a prominent member of the Vietnamese Gang of Five—a group of calligraphers known for their innovative interpretations of the ancient Vietnamese script, Nom. Vasta deeply admires Hoa's expressive line work, and this influence shapes Angelo's sensitivity to the interplay of fragility and strength.

His work, characterized by dynamic patterns and fluid, gestural forms, evokes a powerful sense of emotional immediacy. Layers of texture from oil pastels and expansive, expressive marks situate his figures in spaces that feel simultaneously intimate and theatrical. Vasta's works transform the mundane into spaces of profound beauty and quiet resistance, exploring themes of identity and intimacy. His drawings create a sense of openness and introspection, inviting viewers to share in moments of quiet connection and shared humanity.

Together, Chen and Vasta craft a compelling narrative of reinvention, showing how cultural heritage and personal identity are dynamic, living forces. Inspired by storytelling gatherings, The Moon Dancers celebrate art's transformative power to foster reflection and unity. This exhibition affirms the evolving nature of tradition and memory, where the past dances seamlessly with the present in a space of shared transformation and discovery.

SiSi Chen is an artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA from Laguna College of Art and Design (CA) in 2012 and an MFA from Hunter College (NY) in 2021. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, Chen approaches the world through a constellational understanding, in which positioning is not measured through fixed coordinates but is continually shifting, contingent upon one’s own navigation through ever-fluxing time and space. Recent exhibitions include Art Toronto (Toronto, ON), Parent Company (New York, NY), Tappeto Volante (Brooklyn, NY), Satellite Art Fair (Brooklyn, NY), SPRING/BREAK Art Show (New York, NY), FiveMyles (Brooklyn, NY), McBride Contemporain (Montreal, Quebec), Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philly (Philadelphia, PA), Underdonk (Brooklyn, NY) and Hilbert Raum (Berlin, Germany).

Angelo Vasta is an Italian filmmaker, cinematographer, and self-taught artist based in Brooklyn, New York. His engagement with drawing and painting originated in childhood and developed into a sustained practice, further solidified through a focused exploration of his artistic trajectory during the pandemic lockdown. As a filmmaker, Vasta has built a reputation for collaborating with dance companies, art institutions, and publications such as The New York Times' dance section, to which he has been a contributor since 2018.Vasta integrates his expertise in color, composition, and movement from filmmaking to create works that explore his everyday life. Inspired by personal memories, his vivid and intimate drawings transform ordinary moments into evocative, contemplative compositions. The Moon Dancers marks Vasta’s debut gallery exhibition in New York City, following a previous show at Karma Bird House in Burlington, Vermont. An upcoming exhibition at Rebecca Camacho Presents is scheduled for 2025.