About

Torn fragments bearing vibrant traces; shimmers of lacquer and assorted plastics; chipped, fraying, crumpled edges and faded marks. A number of interrelated themes manifest through the aesthetics of gentle decay in Patricia Sandonis’ varied practice. By repurposing and recollecting, what comes to the fore in her drawings, paintings and ready-mades are the untold stories — personal, historical, geographical — the social phenomena of our everyday environments, and corresponding systems of remembrance and preservation.

The socio-political dimension that emerges within this context is often abstract — a conglomerate of partial realities, reconfigured to visualize their affective power.
In Sandonis’ practice, this often manifests in the form of the monument. By recasting monuments in various media and locations, Sandonis examines their very nature, and the systems through which they are developed and valued — who/what they are for, by whom they are created, and their democratizing potential.
Of central importance to the conception of monuments, for Sandonis, is also the question of time: how long should monuments, as embodiments of collective memory, be expected to last? And, based on this temporality, what form, material, or scale is suited to their preservation?