Koshenkova Maria

Text: Brecht Wright Gander

Virkeligt Uvirkeligt features molten-seeming coagulations of glass, rich in colors which glide and fade and sizzle from lichen green to claret to beige, caught amid a contorted flux of becoming. They hang suspended on ropes, they lay, paralyzed mid-writhe, on steel planes, and they are pinioned by metal lances amid industrial scaffolding. The two main exhibition spaces are lit in contrast: one brightly illuminated, the other enshadowed and dim. This countering echoes across formal and conceptual layers: across the lush dynamism of the glass set against machined metal fixtures, and within the glasswork itself, which is coiled and fractured and iridized–every characteristic seemingly flux–and yet also frozen, silent, and still. One has time, at one’s leisure, to circle the works and take in the almost stupefying depth of detail and phenomenological effect, to observe the way that intermediary layers and treatments play against each other from different angles.  

In Virkeligt Uvirkeligt, Koshenkova’s glassworks serve as the germinal seeds of an altered world. At times, they call to mind bacterial blooms, spectral splotches at the edge of industrial vents. At other times, they seem to be ectoplasmic distillations of energy. Just as the word ineffable is a contradiction–expressing exactly that which it claims to be inexpressible, Koshenkova’s self-negating title (Virkeligt Uvirkeligt translates to “Really Unreal”) contains a logical tension: all conceivable unrealities exist within the reality of the conceivable. All fictions are, in this sense, real. The otherworld arising in Marina Gisich Gallery is also a refraction of the urban environment around Koshenkova’s Denmark studio. The industrial scaffolding that defines the exhibition space includes elements recognizable to any urban dweller. The outside has come in. And the glassworks, foundered in the furnace of the artist’s interiority, have come out. 

“I can work with glass as if it were stone — I grind and polish it, as if it were bronze — by casting it, as if it were a design — by engraving it, and so on. I often need a team — it’s physically impossible to blow glass alone. However, I can work however I want and with whatever I want, if necessary — with a hammer, scissors, or a spoon. Casting allows me to achieve greater control over the shape, as do grinding and polishing.” This is a long and uncomfortable process done alone, requiring special equipment and extreme patience with cold water and dust that settles in the lungs forever. However, these techniques provide a greater degree of control over the final result. In blown glass, everything happens rapidly, which is comparable to performative art — music or dance, only the result is a physical object. You always get something different from what you planned. It took me many years to come to terms with this, but now I enjoy the unpredictability of the result. It seems to me that now the desire for control has been elevated to the absolute, but in life, controlling everything is an illusion. Glass accurately conveys this idea.

Maria Koshenkova