Sensing: Between Perception and Experience is a collection of recent mixed media artworks by Marieken Cochius. Her steel-welded and found-material “drawings” harness the primal energies of fire and heat, time and erosion, folding myth into the act of material transformation.
Myth, whether cultural or personal, is a story often rooted in ritual and gesture, capable of giving form to difficult-to-see forces that shape the world around us.
Using the welding torch as a substitute for a pencil or brush, Cochius creates intricate lace-like drawings that project off the wall, shaped by fire and heat. Each piece records the movement of the flame and the resistance of the material, recalling the unpredictable forces of fire and erosion found in nature. Cochius's large-scale wall panels are a mesmerizing fusion of raw energy and intricate craftsmanship, holding within them echoes of larger transformations of energy in nature and reflecting a sensitive chaos of elements.
Alongside the welded drawings, the exhibition features a series of works created with a blowtorch on antique galvanized steel roofing panels salvaged from an 1820 Hudson Valley barn. By manipulating oxygen and acetylene gases and varying the flame's intensity, the artist transforms the weathered metal into a palette of colors, ranging from stark blacks and whites to earthy browns and subtle hints of blue, allowing the process and material to determine much of the final image.
Embedded within each work is a history of a place and a story of a material. Years of weathering, use, and exposure remain visible beneath the transformed surface as the artist is sensing her way through making in the subtle dance of perception and experience.
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