Art Space 24, Athens
Michel Feiss
After the goodbyes
A staircase which is not deeply worn by footsteps is, in its own view, something indifferent and melancholy made of wood – nothing more.
I believe that in her latest show Marigo Kassi follows this thought of Franz Kafka’s just as a dog follows its master. For the furniture she heaps on her canvas –relics from houses touched by death– seeks the traces of the people who used it. Hence the chair, the table, the wardrobe and the mirror are not a chair, a table, a wardrobe or a mirror; they are, above all, echoes of the gazes, the touching, the sound and the smells of those who experienced them.
These pieces of furniture from a house-moving exercise are pushed to the back of the visual field, in contrast to the painter’s earlier works in which they dominated the foreground, in a stressful and suffocating depiction. Yet memory works noiselessly and incessantly to transform the pain and the panic of absence into quiet mourning and meditation. Yes, Kassi adorns her past life by pasting roses or daisies and photocopies of snapshots from children’s birthday parties, in much the same way that a family looks after its beloved dead. To my eyes, these images are the tender burial offerings to an era that cannot come back – an era which is common to many of us.