In her paper collages, Magda Korsinsky emphasizes the medial support, the surface of the canvas and the materials that comprise her work. The way the pieces are constructed give the viewer an opportunity to gain insight into the complicated creative processes that underpin her work. The tattered pieces of cardboard and paper create the illusion of being able to see through the conventional image, as if the picture surface is liberated from the purpose of representation. The image itself appears to be torn from the surface of the picture – attempting to reveal that which is concealed beneath the image. On the other hand, these paper collages are in fact abstractions that recall certain events and convey their respective emotional impacts through the combination of colour and form.
In her compositions of clothes on wedge frames (special frames onto which the clothes are attached), she accentuates the medial support, her materials and the processing procedure. The worn-out clothes seek to remind us of the individuals they once belonged to – tracing an impression of their bodies. It appears as if the clothes reveal the identities of those who used to own them, and their names are given in the titles of the compositions. Yet the pieces often conceal more than they show.
The spectator is actually faced with pieces of clothing attached to the wall by pins and frames. The way the pieces are arranged, the textures of the fabrics, and the way they have been processed and presented create an aura of mystery, loneliness, muteness and alienation. The abandoned garments, while being intended to remind the viewer of someone, are simultaneously an empty cover, a facade, form without content that has lost its purpose and meaning – a symbol of absence.
Korsinsky’s works deal with the traces that objects and people leave behind that are slowly being erased by time. In her screen prints, abandoned clothes are transformed into bizarre forms superimposed upon one another, arranged so that only the original structure and texture of the fabrics are retained. In her abstract screen prints, the artist experiments with colours and form, she emphasizes the chromatic gradients of the colors, with contours and shapes that merge and flow into one another. Korsinsky reinterprets the formal language of the avant-garde with all its versatility of composition, shape and colour.
Her series Kleiderwoche (Clothes Week) draws its name from the clothes that are used and discarded throughout the seven days of the week. It deals not only with the ephemeral and metamorphic nature of time, but also with the ephemeral and metamorphic nature of objects, forms and colours in time. The clothes that one identifies with certain times and one wears on certain days of the week are transformed by the artist into idiosyncratic abstract compositions. These appear as if they are arranged from spontaneously assembled private, intimate items, however they are actually meticulously put together by the artist to convey the feeling of fleeting ephemerality.
The aura of intimacy is lost, the inner is brought into the outer realm, and the everyday private sphere is presented as depersonalized, distanced, and carefully staged for the viewer’s inspection. The bodily traces of the original wearer merge with the marks of time and with the trails left by the screen-printing process itself. In the end one is confronted with an abstract picture where the private and the public are superimposed upon one another, the forms, identities and colors blend so that the original shapes and forms are hardly recognizable.
Korsinsky’s series of screen-prints based on photos transform the landscapes, interiors and portraits represented in the originals into abstractions. Here as well, the colors and contours that emerge as a result of the screen printing technique do not convey the precise detail of the captured images, but the impressions, memories and feelings that linger. The tattered fragments, lines and vague silhouettes scattered all over the canvas are set in a certain rhythm that conveys the dynamic nature of the depicted scenes.
The theme of ‘trace’ used by Magda Korsinsky in her works is one of art’s most fundamental motifs. Trace as a sign – the inscription of the body upon the fabric is an image representing an individual; simultaneously such a trace corresponds to a sign – the trace of an artist’s body upon the medial surface of the artwork, which in its place is the image claiming to represent reality.