19.20.21 is an exhibition of paintings made during the coronavirus pandemic. It will be the third exhibition at CASSIUS&Co., and will open at 63 Kinnerton Street, London, on 4th December 2021, running until 19th February, 2022. 19.20.21 follows the two solo exhibitions A Door Like A Wall and A Bigger Door Like A Wall, both held in Düsseldorf in 2021, at Bloom and Salon des Amateurs respectively.
During an extended stay in rural Japan in 2019, as the coronavirus was first beginning to emerge, Mashio had embarked on a series of paintings based on the layers of galvanised steel plates that were common in local architecture. She admired the material’s enduring strength in harsh conditions, and the beauty of the weather’s impression on it. Though by no means an exclusively abstract painter, the series of works wanted further development when she returned to Germany, which the artist found herself with plenty of time to pursue as the country moved into its first period of lockdown. Somehow the unintelligibility of the early stages of the pandemic, indeed, its lack of actual images, found expression in the insuperable, connecting forms developing in Mashio’s work, which were both like thin, strong walls, and like fingers reaching out to each other.
