Artists Space

Constantina Zavitsanos
fwiw

September 10 – November 9

Artists Space is pleased to present fwiw, the second New York institutional solo exhibition to foreground the dynamic and groundbreaking work of Constantina Zavitsanos.

A photograph made in a two mirror Schlieren system with knife edge shows the silhouette of a hand holding a small lit flame in front of a round mirror, staged in a black surround. Typically invisible, heat waves are visible along the golden shadowy gradient of a telescope mirror. At the bottom a candle’s wick and its mirror image break the circle.
Constantina Zavitsanos, the one who knows may show the one who knows (detail), 2024. Digital print on dibond. 30 x 30 in. [A photograph made in a two mirror Schlieren system with knife edge shows the silhouette of a hand holding a small lit flame in front of a round mirror, staged in a black surround. Typically invisible, heat waves are visible along the golden shadowy gradient of a telescope mirror. At the bottom a candle’s wick and its mirror image break the circle.]

A wish is a well. A well is a productive wound in the Earth, a spring, an abundance. A gathering round groundwater. A coin has many values, and devalues. A wish is invaluable. For what it’s worth, here’s my two cents: I am still alive.

–CZ

Constantina Zavitsanos works in sculpture, performance, text, and sound and deals in debt, dependency, and other shared resources. Zavitsanos uses the material processes and concepts of superposition, interference, occlusion, and transduction to blur sensing and feeling, knowing and seeing, contiguous and noncontiguous touch.

Fwiw stays in study with perception and poetics across new experiments in haptics, demonstration, and description that privilege the material presence of sound, text, and fleeting image.

Constantina Zavitsanos has exhibited at the New Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Kitchen, Artists Space, Participant Inc., and Performance Space New York, and at Arika UK, Glasgow; If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam; and Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf. With Park McArthur, they wrote “Other Forms of Conviviality” in the journal, Women & Performance, (Routledge, 2013) and “The Guild of the Brave Poor Things” in Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT Press, 2017). They co-organize the cross-disability arts events, I Wanna Be With You Everywhere, and have received a Roy Lichtenstein Award in Visual Arts from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and a Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. Zavitsanos lives and works in New York.

Exhibition support for Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Lead support is provided by Arison Art Foundation. Major support is provided by James Cahn & Jeremiah Collatz.

Support for Artists Space’s exhibitions and programs is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, I.A. O'Shaughnessy Foundation, The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, and the Herman Goldman Foundation.

    A common convenience store countertop coin share dish shines in solid bronze on a soft black velvet ledge. Its raised text reads: “LEAVE - A - PENNY / TAKE - A - PENNY”.
    Constantina Zavitsanos, LEAVE - A - PENNY / TAKE - A - PENNY, 2024, Bronze, 4.5 in. x 4.25 in. x 1.5 in. [A common convenience store countertop coin share dish shines in solid bronze on a soft black velvet ledge. Its raised text reads: “LEAVE - A - PENNY / TAKE - A - PENNY”.]
    A hand drawn pen and ink perspectival image of shallow inclined ramps leading to a short platform are mirrored and doubled on tracing papers and graph paper that stretch wide.
    Constantina Zavitsanos, Sketch for ramps and platform, 2024. Pencil, pen, and ink on papers. 8 x 17 in. [A hand drawn pen and ink perspectival image of shallow inclined ramps leading to a short platform are mirrored and doubled on tracing papers and graph paper that stretch wide.]