Paula Crown’s work Chalice expands on the motif of the Solo Cup, introducing a dramatic shift in materiality to the artist’s ongoing explorations of the human relationship to mark-making in the Anthropocene.

Originally fabricated for Crown’s solo exhibition Architecture of Memory (2018) during the Venice Architecture Biennale, provoked a different manifestation of the cup, a mannerist, twisted CHALICE. Crown experiences architecture as drawing in space - the dimensionalized line. In this case, the chalice is her way of acknowledging the context of the work and a homage to Italy’s architectural and cultural history.

The CHALICE also introduces a dramatic shift in color and material. The 7-foot fiberglass monument gleams golden, taking a commanding shape. The form of the Solo Cup is once again transformed at a scale and finish that provoke questions of value, worth, myth, ceremony, and consumption.

Placing a golden vessel at heroic scale in the gallery brings to mind mythic objects; the Holy Grail of Arthurian literature, the Holy Chalice of Christianity. The art object takes the place of the religious in the exhibition playing on themes of reverence and our instinct to seek out a higher meaning. Looking up into the reified CHALICE, one is sure to ask, “what is it that we believe in?”