Artists Space

Constantina Zavitsanos
fwiw

September 10 – November 9, 2024

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 detail photograph shows a black scientific mount that holds a razor blade. A semicircle of bright blue light shines at the blade’s edge.
Constantina Zavitsanos, Ace of Spades (detail), 2024. Z interferometer: two aluminized 6" diameter spherical mirrors, LED illumination source, knife edge on mounts; soldering iron, fan, infrared light, steel tables. Dimensions variable. Photo: Carter Seddon. [A detail photograph shows a black scientific mount that holds a razor blade. A semicircle of bright blue light shines at the blade’s edge.]

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.

The exterior corner of Artists Space shows a building with highly elaborated columns. On the White Street side, an aluminum can is strapped to the building’s security camera.
Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Installation view (∞, 2024), Artists Space, 2024. Photo: Carter Seddon. [The exterior corner of Artists Space shows a building with highly elaborated columns. On the White Street side, an aluminum can is strapped to the building’s security camera.]
Against an urban landscape, a metal pinhole camera tin is mounted to a roof post.
Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Installation view (∞, 2024), Artists Space, 2024. Photo: Carter Seddon. [Against an urban landscape, a metal pinhole camera tin is mounted to a roof post.]
The Cortlandt Alley main entrance to Artists Space shows two grab bars blocking the staircase entrance to the gallery.
Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Installation view (Specific Objects (Swing), 2024), Artists Space, 2024. Photo: Carter Seddon. [The Cortlandt Alley main entrance to Artists Space shows two grab bars blocking the staircase entrance to the gallery.]
An installation view shows a darkened space flooded in red light. Between two ornate columns, a projector is mounted close to the ground on a short stand. An iridescent blue glows around a shadow cast by a scientific experiment on the left wall behind, while the ceiling is covered in warm crescent silhouettes. On the back black wall, lines of projected text overlap in varying directions.
Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Installation view, Artists Space, 2024. Photo: Carter Seddon. [An installation view shows a darkened space flooded in red light. Between two ornate columns, a projector is mounted close to the ground on a short stand. An iridescent blue glows around a shadow cast by a scientific experiment on the left wall behind, while the ceiling is covered in warm crescent silhouettes. On the back black wall, lines of projected text overlap in varying directions.]
In a darkened room, a bright blue LED light, two circular mirrors and scientific mounts sit atop two metal welding tables.
Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Installation view (Ace of Spades, 2024), Artists Space, 2024. Photo: Carter Seddon. [In a darkened room, a bright blue LED light, two circular mirrors and scientific mounts sit atop two metal welding tables.]
In a darkened room, a bright blue LED light, two circular mirrors and scientific mounts sit atop two metal welding tables. Behind, on two adjacent black walls, lines of projected open captions overlap in varying directions.
Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Installation view (Ace of Spades, 2024; Ms. Pac-Man, 2024), Artists Space, 2024. Photo: Carter Seddon. [In a darkened room, a bright blue LED light, two circular mirrors and scientific mounts sit atop two metal welding tables. Behind, on two adjacent black walls, lines of projected open captions overlap in varying directions.]
In a darkened room lit softly by red light, overlapping lines of open captions are projected on two adjacent black walls. The text varies in color (in faint greens, yellows and blues) and size.
Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Installation view (Ms. Pac-Man, 2024), Artists Space, 2024. Photo: Carter Seddon. [In a darkened room lit softly by red light, overlapping lines of open captions are projected on two adjacent black walls. The text varies in color (in faint greens, yellows and blues) and size.]
In a large dark room, a modular structure is recessed into a raised floor covered with black carpet. The structure is lit in bright blue light, and hosts open water. Behind, a projected image from a camera obscura displays the alley outside. Red light floods the back corner of the room.
Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Installation view (Wishing Well (Korpi), 2023/24; Days (Cortlandt Alley Crosswalk), 2024), Artists Space, 2024. Photo: Carter Seddon. [In a large dark room, a modular structure is recessed into a raised floor covered with black carpet. The structure is lit in bright blue light, and hosts open water. Behind, a projected image from a camera obscura displays the alley outside. Red light floods the back corner of the room.]
In the corner of a darkened room, a blacked out window hosts a small lens, which projects an image of the crosswalk outside the building onto the wall and ceiling inside.
Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Installation view (Days (Cortlandt Alley Crosswalk), 2024), Artists Space, 2024. Photo: Carter Seddon. [In the corner of a darkened room, a blacked out window hosts a small lens, which projects an image of the crosswalk outside the building onto the wall and ceiling inside.]
In a large dark room, a modular structure is recessed into a raised floor covered with black carpet. The structure is lit in bright blue light, and hosts open water. Red light shines in the back room.
Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Installation view (Wishing Well (Korpi), 2023/24; There's something happening here, 2024), Artists Space, 2024. Photo: Carter Seddon. [In a large dark room, a modular structure is recessed into a raised floor covered with black carpet. The structure is lit in bright blue light, and hosts open water. Red light shines in the back room.]
In the dark, a modular structure set in the floor hosts open water that shows several distinct ripple patterns in motion on its surface.
Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Installation view (Wishing Well (Korpi), 2023/24), Artists Space, 2024. Photo: Carter Seddon. [In the dark, a modular structure set in the floor hosts open water that shows several distinct ripple patterns in motion on its surface.]
A close up photograph shows patterns of ripples in water, lit in iridescent blues.
Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Installation view (Wishing Well (Korpi), 2024), Artists Space, 2024. Photo: Carter Seddon. [A close up photograph shows patterns of ripples in water, lit in iridescent blues.]

For best experience, please use headphones.

Walk through of Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw. Video: Rezarta Seferi and Zack Khalil.
Constantina Zavitsanos, Ms. Pac-Man, 2024. HD video of wrapping open captions projected in corner.

October 25, 2024

Heist Divination (fwiw remix)
Concert
8:30pm

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.

Constantina Zavitsanos: fwiw Exhibition Checklist and Map

Shirazi, Sadia and Zavitsanos, Constantina. “Constantina Zavitsanos Looks Beyond the Colour Spectrum.” Frieze. September 10, 2024. Online

Danielle A. Jackson
Rezarta Seferi
Nusheen Ghaemi
Witts
Kelly Taxter
Jay Sanders
Stella Cilman
Max Mayer
Brandon Eng
Axar N.
Geelia Ronkina
Park McArthur
Carolyn Lazard
Jason Hirata
Cameron Rowland
S*an D. Henry-Smith
Denise Ferreria da Silva
Valentina Desideri
Kearra Amaya Gopee
Sadia Shirazi
fields harrington
Jermaine Osei-Tutu
Michelle Koerner
Josephine Sales
Elonda Billera Norris
Geo Wyex
Amalle Dublon
Misha Ilin
agustine zegers
Anastasia Williams
Patrick O’Loughlin
Samir Shaikh
Dominic Leong
Jacob Ji Yong Chung
Domenick Ammirati
Deana Haggag
Jackie Clay
Ben Schwartz
Martin Cox
Tim Pickerill
Bob Bellerue
Jackson Polachik
Gaetano Icangelo
Alex Tabaczka
Jay Abu Hamda
Freddy Gutierrez
Everett Brown
Donna Allen
Phoebe Berglund
Jebediah Long
Hanna Umin
James Warren
Willa Wasserman
Maxine de las Pozas

Special thanks to our construction team:

Gus Kontogiannis
Penny Tsoumas
Fermin Perez
Zim Seferi

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 exhibitions and programs is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, 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, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust and Milton and Sally Avery Foundation.

    A hand reaches into a bronze penny-share dish filled with coins.
    Constantina Zavitsanos, LEAVE - A - PENNY / TAKE - A - PENNY, 2024, Bronze, 4.5 in. x 4.25 in. x 1.5 in. Photo: Destiny Mata [A hand reaches into a bronze penny-share dish filled with coins.]
    A takeaway artwork shows three 2.5 gram gold bullion bars in blue Pamp Suisse certifying cases. Each bar depicts a low relief icon of Lady Fortuna, the blindfolded goddess of luck, fortune, and chance.
    Constantina Zavitsanos, Three Card Monte, 2018/24, three 2.5 gram Pamp Suisse 999.9 gold bars on offer in their certifying cases, dimensions variable. Photo: Constantina Zavitsanos. [A takeaway artwork shows three 2.5 gram gold bullion bars in blue Pamp Suisse certifying cases. Each bar depicts a low relief icon of Lady Fortuna, the blindfolded goddess of luck, fortune, and chance.]