Maps and Models, a new body of work by Roula Partheniou, uses the visual language of model kits to reimagine the still life. The sprue-based armature replaces spatial logic with a system of containment, where fragmented objects float in diagrammatic fields. These compositions follow a self-contained logic – structurally coherent, yet abstract and improbable.
The toy-like works propose a playful, modular approach to meaning-making and suggest a DIY sensibility. Objects appear as clues, part of an undefined game that invites viewers to mentally reconstruct the whole from its parts. Situated between drawing and sculpture, the pieces explore how objects oscillate between image and thing. Rendered in flat colour and shifting views, they resist illusionistic space and instead evoke charts, diagrams, taxonomies, symbolic inventories, and sign systems.
Partheniou’s anatomical still lifes become cognitive tools – frameworks for how we order, decode, and reconstruct the world. These model kits flatten and map reality as a precise yet open-ended system of relationships, reminding us that seeing is never passive – it is an act of construction, a process of making sense from fragments.
The artist would like to thank Annie Koyama, Will Doucet and Simone Schmidt and acknowledge ArtsNB for project support.
The exhibition received a review in ArtForum, written by Dan Adler. The review of the exhibition is available here.
Roula Partheniou’s practice explores the replica and how the remaking of a familiar object can shift our perception and perspective. Her projects tend to take the form of sculptural installations that make use of hyper-real trompe l’oeil, material puns and colour cues to deconstruct the familiar and trigger a reconsideration of common forms. Reproduced to various degrees of verisimilitude, and an experiment with the edge between representation and abstraction, her objects question how we see and read objects and challenge the viewer to negotiate between the perceived and the actual. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Guelph in 2001 and currently lives and works in Sackville, NB. She has exhibited throughout Canada and internationally, with recent exhibitions at Le Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul (Canada); Gallery Closed (USA), Marta (USA), Arróniz Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico), Fundacion Calosa (Mexico), Thameside Gallery (UK); Tonya Bonakdar Gallery (NYC); Essex Flowers (NYC); Oakville Galleries (Canada); The Power Plant in Toronto (Canada); Plug In ICA in Winnipeg (Canada); University of Waterloo Art Gallery (Canada); the Dunlop Gallery in Regina (Canada); Museum of Bat Yam (Israel); AHVA Gallery, Vancouver (Canada) and MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts (USA). In 2019, Roula was artist in residence at Google in Mountain View, California. Her work is held in numerous private, public and corporate collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Musee d’art Contemporaine de Montréal, Fundacion Calosa, the National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives, Munich Re, Bank of Montreal, TD Bank, RBC, Fidelity Investments, Hyundai Capital and The University of Toronto.