Maps and Models | MKG127, Toronto | May 31 to June 28, 2025

Model Kit (Fruit Bowl), 2025, model paint on powder-coated metal, 17.5 x 19"

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.