Karina Peisajovich’s Extended Paintings
By Gregory Volk

Over the past couple of years, Karina Peisajovich has engaged in a risky catharsis with her work, as she’s moved from paintings on canvas to painting-like installations conceived for specific architectural spaces. Paint still abides in these works, largely as geometric forms on the wall that could be purely abstract, but that also delineate walls, ceilings, and floors angling off into the perspectival distance. These painted forms, however, appear in conjunction with pools of colored light projected on the wall, cast shadows, miniature paper cut-outs suspended in mid-air on wires, and electrical tape applied directly to the wallsæall bare-bones, economical stuff that nevertheless is visually enthralling. It also takes a while to realize that the pictorial architectural zones Peisajovich develops on the wall are in fact renditions of the actual space where the installation is situated, for instance the wall on your left or the floor underfoot. This makes for a peculiar mix of clarification and disorientation. As you stand in a normal room you see the same room mirrored or doubled on the wall right before you. Suddenly, you become not only aware, but hyper-aware, of your surroundings, and at the same time you’re also aware that these surroundings have been decisively, even magically, altered. Underpinning everything is Peisajovich’s desire to work with objects and elements directly, even, or rather especially, those that have long figured prominently in painting per se. Instead of representing light via exquisite brush work, for instance, she works with actual light, and instead of representing shadow she works with shadows for real.

Excerpt of the text: Karina Peisajovich´s extended paintings.
April, 2003