Spring/Summer 2025 Collection

This collection is rooted in my ongoing exploration of painting as both an ancient practice and a contemporary language. For the Spring/Summer 2025 series, I looked to the technique of fresco secco, a method historically used to paint on dry plaster and re-imagined it through a modern, experimental lens.

Each piece is built from layers of plaster and gesso, applied thickly onto watercolor paper. The texture becomes a terrain, cracked and uneven, offering a surface that holds the history of fresco. Once the plaster dries, I work into it with watercolor and charcoal, allowing pigment and line to interact unpredictably with the absorbent ground.

This process invites imperfection and chance, echoing the aged walls of ancient structures where time and touch leave their mark. The result is a body of work that exists somewhere between artifact and contemporary expression - fragile, luminous, and embedded with memory.

With this series, I’m asking: how can we honor ancient methods while pushing them forward? How does the past remain present in our materials, our marks, and our desire to preserve what is impermanent?

— Kalli Bednarz