The Work

My work is abstract, minimal, and defies standard expectations of presentation and access.  I work with common materials: gouache, graphite, tape, various paperboards, and cardboard. A type of "provisionalism" named by Raphael Rubenstein in 2009.  My work possesses qualities of painting, drawing, and sculpture. Not being any one of those disciplines is my way of reaching an abstract visual language that responds to this time. The viewer can feel suspended between genres. The work is filled with formal concerns; at the same time, abstraction is not about "nothing".  

Sue Sommers says about my work in her 2018 essay Art strata: deposition and erosion as process and message.  

"Postmodernism enriches the artist’s toolkit, but in its pure form, can return the artist to a position of servitude to society ....Kiessling’s dual approach drives her to make beautiful abstract drawings that nevertheless hew closely to the current credo that the artist is an observer of the world and cannot help but communicate her environment."

The abstract structure of my work references the visual plane of a prayer book dedicated to orphans, c.1930, handmade by my grandfather. The content of my work is intentionally intimate, frameless, floating, and transient. Language, wordplay, and the responsibility to choose one's words carefully appear in titles in Italian, Latin, and English.

Daily posts of about upcoming shows and work from the studio can be seen on Instagram @newpractice