Peter D. Springberg, MD Vault Gallery

Things Keep Their Secrets
Curated by Dinghy Rig

In her ongoing work A Partial History, Marina Kassianidou recreates books from her family archive in Cyprus. The recreated books, including the one in the current Things Keep Their Secrets show, are based on books that come from a shelf in the artist’s grandmother’s library occupied by 19th and early 20th century volumes, some of them so worn out the text is virtually obliterated. That shelf became imperatively meaningful to the artist in 2016, at the time she was leaving Cyprus to emigrate to the US. Her “re-reading” and re-making stay resolutely with the object and re-materialize it by attending not to the Greek text but to the marks of use and time. Folds, creases, tears, stains, pencil marks, discolorations, and – indeed – wormholes, form a palimpsest whose inventory is taken slowly in the most restrained way, through line – that which separates. This approach opens for Kassianidou a rumination on the ambiguities of marks, of embodiment, language, translation, knowledge, history, and of the nature of separation itself; the caesura in Latin, tomé (τομή) in Greek. As such, the work amounts to a tomography of sorts, a way of looking in that involves a cut. The indexes and the non-linguistic memory Kassianidou activates through tracing point quietly into the way artifacts do and do not reveal the life world from which they come. They cut. We are left to bleed.

Marina Kassianidou was born in Limassol, Cyprus, and lives and works between Limassol and Boulder, Colorado, USA. She received a B.A. in Studio Art from Stanford University (CA, USA), an M.A. in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (London, UK), and a Ph.D. in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts (London, UK). 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), Stand4 Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Yes Ma’am Projects (Denver, CO), Lane Meyer Projects (Denver, CO), Rule Gallery (Marfa, TX), and the NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, NY). She has been awarded residencies 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. She is currently Assistant Professor in Art Practices at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Dinghy Rig is a collaborative artist-run art production and exhibition program launched by Aitor Lajarin-Encina and Marius Lehene. Marina Kassianidou’s Things Keep Their Secrets is the first installment of a long-term collaboration with the Museum of Art, Fort Collins, which will be hosting the Dinghy Rig shows in their safety vault room.

Admission:
Adults: $10.00
Students: $8.00
Seniors (65 and up): $8.00
Under 18: FREE