Reading Room, Marta Publications 1 - 10

Benjamin Critton and Heidi Korsavong founded Marta in September of 2019, as a venue to host "works at the meeting points of art and design" and to make "space for artists to experiment with the utility of design, and for designers to explore the occasional abandonment of function." 

To celebrate their third anniversary they are opening a "gentle retrospective" this evening, focusing on the first ten publications from the gallery:

1

Alex Reed

International Ceramics Friendship Park

6.0 × 10.0 in, 48 pp.

2

Klas Ernflo

Hoodie, Jacket, Dress

3 Prints, ea. 20.0 × 24.0 in

3

Elvire Bonduelle

Ceci nest pas son des pipes

6.0 × 10.0 in, 48 pp.

4

Lindsey Muscato & Joshua Friedman

Kodama

10.0 × 12.0 in, 24 pp.

5

Various Artists

Under / Over

6.0 × 10.0 in, 160 pp.

6

Minjae Kim

I Was Evening All Afternoon

6.0 × 10.0 in, 48 pp.

7

Kristen Wentrcek and Andrew Zebulon

HOG TRAP

10.0 × 6.0 in, 48 pp.

8

Various Artists

Built In at the Neutra VDL House

12.0 × 10.0 in, 96 pp.

9

Roula Partheniou

Strange Objects

48.0 × 10.0 in, Accordion

10

Ross Hansen

Forty-Eight Samples

6.0 × 10.0 in, 48 pp.

Reading Room opens tonight, Saturday September 24th and continues (Wednesday to Saturday, from Noon – 5PM) until October 22nd. 

The works are available for sale, and - for the first time - available as a complete set. Visit the gallery site here, for more information. 

Roula Partheniou | Strange Objects

Roula Partheniou

Strange Objects

Los Angeles, USA: Marta, 2022

[16] pp., 48 × 10" (Unfolded) 6 × 10" (Folded)

Edition of 100

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Two and Two Together (March 11 to April 23rd, 2022), Strange Objects is a limited edition exhibition brochure/artists' book/framable artwork. It features a panorama of post-it note paintings made specifically for publication. The eight images reproduce hard-edge acrylic paintings on canvas, which remove the third dimension of the artist's sculptural post-it note works. 

Designed by Benjamin Critton, the verso features an essay by Partheniou on early childhood development and the mapping of meaning onto form - the artist's first published writing on her own work. 

Strange Objects is available from the publisher for $40.00, here. 

For a full monograph on Partheniou's work, see earlier post, here. 

Today is also the final day to visit her Toronto exhibition, Stationery Object at MKG127. 

Roula Partheniou | Untitled (Fragile)

Roula Partheniou

Untitled (Fragile)

Sackville, Canada: Self-published, 2022

2 × 10 × 10 cm

Edition of 15 

A hand-painted sculpture (acrylic on Wood) of a roll of "Fragile" tape, as part of Partheniou's inaugural exhibition with Marta in Los Angeles, "Two and Two Together". The show features other tape rolls, chalk brushes, cheezies, frisbees, stationery and other items replicated by hand. The exhibition runs until April 23rd and the gallery is open by appointment, Wednesday – Friday, from noon to 5PM, and to the public on Saturdays, also from noon to five.

For more information, visit their website, here. 

Roula Partheniou | Untethered

Roula Partheniou

Untethered

Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 2017 - 

30.5 × 22.9 × 22.9 cm

Open Edition (each unique)

This foam and cast resin replica of a balloon features an embedded screw allowing it to be securely affixed to the ceiling. The edition is unlimited, with the buyer selecting an available colour of automotive paint; no two works share the same colour. Production shots below. 

To purchase, click here.

Partheniou's work can currently be seen in a solo exhibition at Marta in Los Angeles. Titled Two and Two Together, the show runs until April 23rd. For more information, click here. 

"Partheniou’s research and material reconnaissance engages a vocabulary of replication which stutters across her process—but not in reference to static originals. Rather, she attends to the learned reflections of objects housed in our embodied understandings of language, signification, and meaning-production. We come to know objects in and with time, as the detritus of everyday associations pile atop our understandings of form. In a shifted context, what lesson do we encounter from an object that refuses to satiate our assumptive expectation for its use? Works like ‘Untitled (Post-Its)’ and ‘Untitled (White Square with Colour Bar)’ stare plainly outward, eliciting the subjective palimpsest of a viewer’s memories to roar forward and barrage these surfaces like projected light upon a screen. The symphonic openness which saturates “Two and Two Together” seemingly culminates its deadpan delivery in the wall-work ‘Untitled (Brush Lines),’ a jittering grid of striped felt forms that looms at the edge of optical illusion, like a regime of chalkboard erasers stacking themselves en masse. ‘Untitled (Brush Lines)’ names its own contingency to painting within the title, a strategic departure from other works in the exhibition that further dislodges familiarity and function and asks a different question about how we got here in the first place."

- Marta Press Release