Martine Kaczynski
Threshold
July 1–July 30, 2023
Opening reception Saturday, July 1, 3–5 PM
Artist discussion Saturday, July 22, 3 PM
Threshold presents the work of Martine Kaczynski.
Opera singers Sungyeun Kim and Maria Giovanetti will perform in collaboration with the exhibition on July 1 and July 22:
Léo Delibes, Duo des fleurs / Flower Duet (opera Lakmé)
Ferdinand Gumbert, O bitt' euch liebe Vögelein / Oh please, dear little birds
Artist discussion with Turley Gallery exhibiting artists Martine Kaczynski and Adam Liam Rose with guest moderator Joan Grubin on Saturday, July 22, 2023. Part of a special event for Upstate Art Weekend 2023. Video by Zach Durocher.
Martine Kaczynski, Split, 2023, colored pencil on paper, 25.5 x 19.5 inches
Martine Kaczynski
Threshold is a selection of new works by sculptor Martine Kaczynski which represents an ambitious achievement of both concept and construction. Wrought in a sweeping range of diverse fabrication processes and specialized materials, large and austere sculpture is complemented by drawings that are at once diagrammatic and surrealist; both challenging status quos of language, object, and their implied hierarchy. (It is not surprising that Kaczynski has hired opera singers to perform at the opening, redirecting class divisions she observes in the world at large.) The emergent collection is bold in scale and idea, yet subtle and elusive in detail and semiological inference, adding new vocabulary to the artist’s mature and distinct lexicon.
Kaczynski’s work distills the poignant intermediate spaces between more easily nameable physical and emotional waypoints.
Martine Kaczynski, Fence / Defense, 2023, PVC and paint, 7 x 5 x 4 inches
Recreating abandoned objects and rendering them as austere and ghostly archetypal forms evokes the uncanny; they are familiar, yet eerily offset in hard-to-define ways. Waterline is a 6-foot diameter recreation of an inverted water troth, CNC milled from foam and coated in an exacting recipe of sealant, paint, and epoxy, complete with the mirage of a pool of water. The mirage extends to an optical illusion of false perspective, as Kaczynski has rendered this once-round object into an ellipse, and it toggles between the two shapes with varying vantage points.
Building signs, shelters, and structures that cannot be readily verified as functional or illusory challenges subconscious interactions with architecture and the semiotics of the constructed world. Meta Yellow, a 9-foot tall canopy of finished aluminum and custom printed cotton, which is clearly slanted, slipped, and skewed in a number of ways, examines structures either failing in some strength which they overtly advertise, or presenting overtly as broken even though they maintain some integrity of form or function.
Martine Kaczynski, Detail of Fence / Defense, 2023, PVC and paint, 7 x 5 x 4 inches
And a series of stylized fence silhouettes, Fence / Defense inside the gallery, Estate Corners in Yellow and Mauve in the garden outside, mock the archetypal boundary marker, a recurring theme in Kaczynski’s recent work. Domesticated in material and design, fences serve as performative symbols of ownership and status. They live in a class of symbolic objects which advertise safety, security, and defense while providing little real substance in either, a theme often explored in Kaczynski’s work informed and inspired by her Holocaust refugee heritage.
Thresholds are inherently transitory: they are delineations between two states, and we name them only to say that we’ve passed through them. Kaczynski’s work asks us to pause in the threshold, to meditate in the uncertain, and challenge our instinctual quest for context and absolutes. Through the lens of constructed nostalgia, familiarity-borne sentiment, examination of symbol posturing, and the apparent emptiness of the archetypal, Kaczynski’s work is balanced between emotional cliche and philosophical inquiry. Objects and images which loiter in the space between permanent and temporary, specific and generic, significant and insignificant, ultimately transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Written by Christopher Werner
Photography by Alon Koppel
Installation photography by Alon Koppel Photography