we are no longer beings but sensations
“MYRIAD SENSATIONS THAT NOTE THE PERCEIVABLE”
we are no longer beings but sensations
Marina Kassianidou’s solo project we are no longer beings but sensations at Office K102A space is an exhibition whose works respond to the features and details of the space surrounding it. Collage is one of the techniques Marina revisits, as can be seen in previous works, several ongoing, whose forms include A4 lined paper, index cards or letters. However, the works in this project include collage on patterned fabrics, paintings, and manufactured wood. Collage is employed as a particular approach to compose a work of art from within existing surfaces, and to draw viewers’ attention to looking equally within or around these materials. To give an example, her collage in Faulty Samples VI, adopts a sample of patterned fabric in which irregularity in the pattern and disfiguration over time make up a salient part of the whole. She treats these works in an unfolding of layering what is “ordinarily” removed out of sight, a “glitch” that delays production, endowing them instead with their inherent evaluations of value. The installation of works might appear to “begin” somewhere defined, in physical objects, yet they brush with whatever or whomever is around them, absorbing and exuding sensibility at once. And the layering of surface is an artistic intervention that comes from everyday stuff, a response to what is not always conspicuous but present nonetheless. It is a gestural reminder that all things exist in relation to others, and those that don’t appear to be associated will nonetheless tender a sensation.
Marina’s concentration through microscopic gestures attends to this subtle way of collocating clearly constructed positions that engender deeper detachments from the world and its contents. Revealing these through relations of space and matter, and the viewer’s mindful consideration, we are able
to recognize how select situations that render certain humans and non-corporeal entities invisible in one particular context, can be made to feel seen and relevant in another. By making gentle interventions through tracing or marking, with her floor works, the “stain paintings”, also the title of this series, she makes public the endured stains. Similarly, for the acrylic on cotton fabric paintings, any focus on distinguishing the acrylic intervention from the pattern of the fabric dissolves as the faint threshold between them morphs into a vibration. The two are entwined and form the entire work, a fabric of profuse sensations.
Marina Kassianidou resumes a dedicated research practice in material which explores the possibilities that diffuse from a plethora of sensations generated in the process of being in propinquity with her surroundings. Detail-oriented in approach, she studies another type of imagined labor invested in the constructive caring of a mass-produced domestic substance and surface. Whether through floors, a bookcase, walls or a window, the works seem to suggest that when we pay closer attention to inanimate matter, to those hidden details found in space and texture that are often missed, a sphere of dissimilar activity might emerge, moving us into an occasion of social amelioration. Insentient material or distinct objects, if we think of them as offering novel sensations, can coexist with the zoetic, and the artist gestures to shift perceptions which define and divide the human from non-human, the ordinary from the noteworthy, the physical from the imperceptible.
Maria Petrides
Maria Petrides (she, they) is an independent writer, editor & translator from the Eastern Mediterranean, & is based in Athens, Greece. She writes across forms, short fiction, poetry, arts writing, and experimental writing. Her works have been published in academic journals, zines, anthologies, and art publications. She is currently working on her first collection of short stories.
WORKS ON WALL
Gradient I (Variants series), 2023
Acrylic on patterned cotton fabric
6 x 8 x 0.875 inches
Gradient II (Variants series), 2023
Acrylic on patterned cotton fabric
6 x 8 x 0.875 inches
Gradient III (Variants series), 2023
Acrylic on patterned cotton fabric
6 x 8 x 0.875 inches
Gradient IV (Variants series), 2023
Acrylic on patterned cotton fabric
6 x 8 x 0.875 inches
WORKS ON TABLE
Faulty Samples VI, 2023
Fabric collages with patterned cotton fabric in bound book
12.5 x 9.5 x 0.75 inches (closed book)
Faulty Samples VII, 2023
Fabric collages with patterned cotton fabric in bound book
12.5 x 9.5 x 0.75 inches (closed book)
WORKS IN BOOKCASE
Masquetry VII (series of works), 2015–2023
Adhesive vinyl on basswood, found wood, hardboard panels, found laminate, and medium-density fiberboard
Dimensions variable
OSB Double Take, 2019
Adhesive vinyl on basswood panel, Acrylic on basswood panel
8 x 10 x 0.75 inches each panel (diptych)
Mirror Mirror, 2019
Graphite on basswood panels
10 x 8 x 0.75 inches each panel (diptych)
Stain Paintings (series of works), 2018–2023
Acrylic on found vinyl flooring
Dimensions variable
WORKS ON FLOOR
Stain Painting (all the stains on the floor, K102A, November 15, 2022), 2023
Acrylic on found vinyl flooring
27 x 22.5 inches
Stain Painting, 2023
Acrylic on found vinyl flooring
9.75 x 14.45 inches
WORKS ON WINDOWS
Rain Fragments (Limassol, January 7, 2023), 2023
Acrylic medium on clear acrylic sheets
6 x 8 x 0.08 inches each
Marina Kassianidou was born in Limassol, Cyprus, and lives and works between Limassol and Boulder, Colorado. Her work has been exhibited internationally at spaces such as the House of Cyprus (Athens, Greece), NiMAC (Nicosia, Cyprus), Thkio Ppalies (Nicosia, Cyprus), Tenderpixel Gallery (London, UK), Yes Ma’am Projects (Denver, Colorado), GEORGIA (Denver, Colorado), Lane Meyer Projects (Denver, Colorado), east window SOUTH (Boulder, Colorado), and Rule Gallery (Marfa, Texas). She has been awarded fellowships at the Ragdale Foundation, Hambidge Center, Ox-Bow, and The Studios at MASS MoCA, among others. She is a recipient of the 2016 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant.
DXIX is an artist run initiative founded by James Dean and Aitor Lajarin in Venice Beach, California, in 2015. DXIX operates from the Los Angeles and Northern Colorado areas engaging in projects locally, nationally, and internationally seeking to facilitate exchanges, collaborations, and conversations among artists, curators, writers, and audiences to create exhibitions, workshops, events, publications, and other culturally significant experiences, materials and research.
K102A Office is a gallery space located in Aitor Lajarin-Encina’s office in the Painting Area at the Department of Art and Art History at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. K102A Office is dedicated to offering a space for artists and other cultural producers to develop contemporary art and culture projects with related pedagogical experiences for, from, and with the CSU-Fort Collins-Colorado community to enrich the local cultural environment and establish meaningful conversations with other communities and places.
K102A Office
Painting Area
Visual Arts Building
Department of Art and Art History
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado, USA
April 6 - August 31, 2023
Published by and the artist ©