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Marina Kassianidou, who is 'obsessed by the idea of marking,' has received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant

To those who aren鈥檛 art professors, students, historians or fine artist themselves, much of the joy derived from viewing what鈥檚 commonly called abstract art (though the artists might just call it 鈥渁rt鈥�) is derived from seeing something for the first time, an image or format entirely new to the viewer and their experience.

It might be aesthetically pleasing, but hopefully it makes you think about questions you鈥檝e never contemplated before. It should transport you, if only momentarily, to a foreign intellectual space you鈥檝e never quite inhabited.

Such is the space you might find yourself in while visiting the studio of Marina Kassianidou, assistant professor in the Art and Art History Department at the University of Colorado Boulder and recent recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, for which artists throughout the United States are nominated anonymously, and a jury of visual artists, curators and educators select its 25 annual honorees.

Step into the studio. Look at the glass windowpane propped atop the desk, leaning against the wall, and what seem to be raindrops frozen in time, covering the glass鈥� Look at the footprint on the vinyl floor-tile hanging there on the wall鈥� Take a close look at that photo of a concrete floor. Each and every fracture and crevice in the natural concrete appears to have a duplicated shadow positioned three inches to the right of the original crack.

The raindrops (鈥淩ain,鈥� 2016) are acrylic and were painted by Kassianidou, who teaches painting and drawing at CU Boulder.

鈥淗ere, I remade the raindrops on the inside of the glass based on all the traces of past raindrops that I could see on the outside,鈥� she said. 鈥淵ou can see a trace where each raindrop came down.鈥�

鈥淭he painted raindrops will never evaporate and disappear,鈥� reads the artist鈥檚 online portfolio. 鈥淚nstead, they create an uneven texture on the glass that can be felt via touching.鈥�

The vinyl floor tiles are 鈥渟tain paintings鈥� that Kassianidou traced from markings on a floor that she鈥檇 been standing and working on, then re-created on the vinyl tiling.

The photograph of the concrete floor was taken in the Thkio Ppalies Artist-Led Project Space of Nicosia, Cyprus, the Mediterranean island-country Kassianidou calls home. The piece, called 鈥�23 x 2鈥� (2016), is an impressive, site-specific installation that uses a rectangular, concrete floor measuring 50 by 25 feet as its canvas.

鈥淚 walked through that space multiple times over a series of months trying to figure out how I was going to respond to it. And it was slowly over time that I started noticing these cracks that were kind of separating the space,鈥� or breaking the floor apart.

鈥淭here were these very regular ones, and these more-irregular ones. So that became the thing in this space that I could hold onto and say, 鈥極K. This is what I鈥檓 responding to.鈥欌��

Although the aim of Kassianidou鈥檚 work was never to create an illusion, 鈥�23 x 2鈥� appears as though she had printed a photograph of the entire original floor on translucent film and laid it over the original surface in order to give every crack and imperfect line an identical evenly spaced silhouette.

鈥淚鈥檓 kind of obsessed with the process of marking,鈥� said Kassianidou of her work. 鈥淚鈥檓 interested in this idea that when you mark a surface, you鈥檙e trying to communicate some meaning, or tell the world you exist in some way. It鈥檚 a very simple process in itself, leaving a mark somewhere, but I think it has much bigger implications than that.鈥�

鈥淚 like to use materials that are available in my immediate surroundings,鈥� she said, pointing to a collage on fabric and laminate flooring, paintings on vinyl flooring, and drawings on index cards.

Kassianidou鈥檚 approach to painting, drawing, collage and other forms, she explained, is a way of relating to whatever surface she鈥檚 using. 鈥淚 want my work to respond to something already there,鈥� she said. So the choices she makes when creating her work, 鈥渢he colors, the placement鈥︹�� all have a great deal to do with the original, intended purpose of the surface, how it looks, what it鈥檚 made from or a multitude of other aspects that she connects with.

According to psychoanalytic theory, Kassianidou said, children mark up paper, walls and surfaces to 鈥渘egotiate the relationship they鈥檙e just starting to have with the world,鈥� which is what she contends she, herself, is doing.

But Kassianidou鈥檚 work also wrestles with the idea of 鈥渕aterial/surface鈥� and 鈥渁rtist/marker鈥� being assigned, by definition, 鈥減assive鈥� and 鈥渁ctive鈥� roles. If a surface can only be passive, 鈥渞eceiving鈥� a mark, while the artist must then only be active and autonomous, Kassianidou disagrees with these fixed definitions and bases much of her objective on her discomfort with these designations.

鈥淐yprus was a British colony,鈥� she said, introducing a deeper comparison between the 鈥渁ctive marker/passive surface鈥� idea and a colonizing nation with the state it colonizes. She wasn鈥檛 always preoccupied with the concept, but, rather, drew the connection later on. 鈥淪o, we鈥檙e kind of in a perpetual post-colonial stage. I was thinking about colonialism in those terms. Another nation comes into a territory and treats that territory like a blank surface, so they ignore what was already there and impose whatever they want onto that.鈥�

鈥淚s there another way,鈥� asked Kassianidou, 鈥渙f making art that is not caught up in this strange dynamic of mark versus surface, or activity versus passivity, or presence versus absence? Is there another way of approaching this that does away with all that?鈥�

Kassianidou is going to spend much of her grant funding to acquire new material to use in her work. 鈥淚鈥檓 in that stage where I need to see what鈥檚 around me and start experimenting,鈥� she said. 鈥淚鈥檓 going to do some research-traveling around the U.S. As you can see, I like to find interesting spaces in which to work.鈥澨�听听听