OLIVIA COELN, MARINA SULA / LOW FREQUENCIES
March 12th - March 21st
Olivia Coeln
Marina Sula
Marina Sula
Olivia Coeln
Marina Sula
Olivia Coeln
Marina Sula
Olivia Coeln
Fascination with today’s discrepancy between the elemental human need for tranquility and resultant disciplines such as mysticism and the requirements of today’s rush for advancement and aspirationsto be in the lead concerning progress with an ever accelerating pace driven by extremely competitious capitalism, is shared by the artists Marina Sula and Olivia Coeln.
Marina Sula plays with various forms of space. By creating work that summons three-dimensionality and by incorporating elements of virtual reality within flat surface mediums, she bewilders and induces disorientation. Prints of ceilings with lit indoor lighting have been printed on plexiglass and mounted on dibond. They are then installed on a section of the accurately tatami sized benches, on which visitors are allowed to sit on. The other part of the benches are filled with sand, reminding of tranquil Zen gardens with characteristic patterns drewn in. The combination of artificial and naturally-occuring materials allegorise the cleft of traditional and novel forces, currently profusely evident all over the world.
The prints become a component of furniture, basically leaving their classical territory. This provokes utter confusion, for you can see that you are about to sit on a ceiling. Additionally they have been printed on sheer glass, suggesting continuing space, drawing you into the deep and thus evoking the Angst of falling - but remember, you are sitting on the image of a point which is usually located above you. So you won’t be blamed if you experience a certain amount of disorientation, dizziness and insecurity.
Olivia Coeln’s practice involves long strolls, that allow for musings over the current environment and architecture with particular attention to natural light and its ability to temporarily highlight, structure and frame objects. During this activity she is frequently reaching a meditative state, similar to what one seeks to experience in a sanctuary. Her photographs have the aura of minimalistic, quiet spaces and feature a certain intangibility. Her work too, like Sula’s, is reaching out into real space by requiring more room than the medium usually does. Mounted on plates, they have been layered on top of each other, connected via a partially maladjusted constant in form of a ray of light. But they still appear to be hegemonic and such a harmonious fit, one suddenly forgets to question all the unexpected appearances of impossible corners this mismatch causes.
The loop between fiction and reality, flatness of print and three-dimensionality of real space discloses her question about how far photography can go and how it is analog to painting and architecture.
Marina and Olivia’s work both contain dichotomies. They are even opposing each other as Marina’s work revolves around artificial lighting and Olivia’s on natural lighting and show us different perspectives of space while they are transgressing what we assume to be the natural borders of the media they work with.
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Text by Sandra Petrasevic