Anthilia Sklavenitis
1638 1/2 Veteran Avenue, 2020
Acrylic Paint
22 x 10 inches each
This work deals with liminal space — unobserved, “useless” space. The crevice under the door, a crack in the sidewalk, the peeking between the blinds. In the crowded city of Los Angeles there exists peculiar swaths of unused space: empty overgrown lots, perhaps a storage unit in the center of a packed neighborhood. From the bathroom window of my apartment I have direct access to one of these liminal spaces — the complex parking lot. This is a space of constant movement yet remains more or less the same. It’s a transition between inner and outer life for my neighbors and myself. While not visually exceptional it serves an important function.
My work has always dealt with living things – portraits, the human form, and nature. With this piece I seek to rid the space of movement and life in order to figure out whether the space lives without us. Scientists at Stanford University have displayed how a particle can exist in two separate locations at once — until it is observed. The wave function of our eyes landing on the particle solidifies it into reality. In this way, the lot is only real if we’re looking at it, or if someone is moving through it. This painting of an admittedly banal space elevates it, drawing attention to the unobserved. The frame of the window acts as the letter box — or rather, the window box. Letterboxes in film got their name from another liminal space alternatively called the mail slot. The window frame is at once part of the image and excluded from it. It’s the vessel that allows you to understand the full picture. The substrate, wood, is the material of living things. It is also the material of houses, doors, and human-made construction. By painting on wood, this representation of a window becomes tied to the physical window in my house, and all other human-made liminal spaces. By painting the space at different points in time I’m calling attention to the immovability of the lot (usually a backdrop to the life whirling by) and referencing Monet’s Rouen Cathedrals. As Monet showed us, the changing of time and season can make the seemingly unchangeable world shift and move in unexpected and magnificent ways. This empty lot, like the paintings of the unmovable cathedral, is a meditation on trying to observe time and space.
