Katerina Kyselica: The Poetics of Happenstance

Katerina Kyselica: The Poetics of Happenstance

The Octagon Gallery, 888 Main Street, Roosevelt Island, NY 10044

On view: October 6 – December 19, 2025

Reception: Saturday, October 18, 5–8 PM

Explore prints, mixed media, and handmade paper works by Katerina Kyselica, whose art embraces structure, chance, and subtle imperfection. Drawing from her series Études, Just Like That, and Crossing, this exhibition invites viewers to discover unexpected beauty in the poetic balance between order and irregularity.

The exhibition The Poetics of Happenstance features Katerina Kyselica’s fine art prints, mixed media pieces, and works from hand-made paper that invite viewers to intimate and poetic encounters. Conceived as small studies of two-dimensional space, the works on view – a selection from the series Études, Just Like That, and Crossing – showcase the artist’s proclivity for subtle nuances, tactile materials, and a muted color palette.

Kyselica’s playful approach to creating imagery and her affinity for a written word can be explored in printmaking series Études and Just Like That. The basis for each image’s composition is a structure consisting of small squares. While in Just Like That the structure itself forms the image, in Études the artist embossed the grid and used it to further guide her in completing each work with collaged content – pieces of paper and letters or words cut out from printed materials – and fiber or punched holes.

Kyselica indulges in the process of art making. For the two series, she explored the idea of letting external factors impact the image. Arranging small cardboard squares into a loosely defined structure and pushing them through an etching press – where subjected to high pressure they slightly but noticeably moved – the artist surrendered control of the outcome, thus giving in to the law of chance. When pressed after being inked, not only the grid moved, but each square accepted ink differently, resulting in a variety of tones. The squares became spaces of their own. 

In Crossing, a series of small paper pulp paintings featuring black parallel lines crossing a soft, pastel-like-color base sheet, Kyselica explored the capacity of a cotton paper pulp, used to make hand-made paper. Although a template was employed to paint the lines, the artist began and ended each line freehand. What’s more, the lines extend beyond edges of the base sheet, like anchors fixing each line at its place. Rachel Gordon of the International Print Center New York once stated that “Kyselica is giving life to a sort of imagery that we’re accustomed to perceiving as stagnant.” Crossing, with subtle irregularities in the seemingly perfect line structure and the unexpected line form, offers viewers an opportunity to discover and explore likely narratives. 

“I enjoy exploring irregularities within a structure of identical or similar shapes. When I make a mistake in the process or a tool leaves unintended traces in my image, and I like it, not only I don’t correct it but integrate it into my work. I use these imperfections to disrupt the structure, without creating chaos. Because they’re subtle, they can peacefully coexist within the structure.”