Piano: The Body is a Sacred Garment was an installation of new works (video, performance, sculpture, multi-media) @ Gallery CA (440 E. Oliver Street, Baltimore, MD) from October 4-November 7, 2025, by artist Kristin Putchinski, curated by Quentin Gibeau. Events included an opening & closing reception with community members, trash abatement activities centered in the neighborhood, and live performances of the installation of Putchinski’s sculptures, “Hex, 1 & Hex 2” (featuring a duet with Anna Kroll) and “Garment/Gauge” (Putchinski solo.)

OPENING RECEPTION 
October 4, 2025 @ 8PM
Artists’ warm up begins at 7:45PM followed by a 20 minute long duet performance of the installation of “Hex 1 & Hex 2,” featuring Kristin Putchinski & Anna Kroll.
After a brief intermission, Putchinski will perform a 20 minute long solo performance of the installation of “Garment/Gauge.”

DOCUMENTATION PERFORMANCES of “Hex 1 & Hex 2” & “Garment/Gauge”
October 18, 2025 @ 5-8PM
Artists will perform the two sculpture installations for video documentation. Audience is invited to view through the windows of the gallery.

CLOSING RECEPTION
November 7 @ 8PM

skin hunger was an installation of new works (video, performance, sculpture, multi-media) @ The Club Car Gallery (12 W. North Avenue, Baltimore, MD) from April 11-May 4, 2025, by artist Kristin Putchinski, curated by Beth Yashnyk. Events included an opening & closing reception with community members, 2 live performances of the installation of Putchinski’s sculpture, “Hex,” and 2 trash abatement events in the lot next to the venue where 50 lbs of trash were removed.

OPENING RECEPTION & COMMUNITY INSTALL
APRIL 11, 5-8PM
Community members enjoyed directing Putchinski to add their colorful tape selections to the whole work.

PERFORMANCES of “Hex”
April 27, 12-1PM
An hour long performance of the sculpture, “Hex.” This sculpture, comprised of 88 disassembled piano keys was repetitively “installed” for one full hour. Inspired by Yvonne Rainer’s “task based performance” concept, this performance used the materials from Putchinski’s 2024 experimental music & video performance, “Hex & Defense.”

CLOSING RECEPTION & COMMUNITY de-INSTALL
MAY 4, 3-7PM
Community members assisted in a DE-install the 36 feet of colorful painter’s tape and re-rolled the materias so that the artist can re-use them.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

skin hunger is an installation of new video, performance, sculpture, and multimedia works that explores the physical and emotional dimensions of touch, repetition, and shared labor. This body of work reflects my ongoing interest in public action, participatory making, and the quiet gestures that hold communities—and bodies—together.

Installed at The Club Car Gallery in Baltimore, the exhibition begins with a Community Install on April 11, 5-8PM,  inviting guests to collectively create a 36-foot painter’s tape installation, one strip at a time. The act is simple, meditative, and intentional—a slow-build toward presence.

Central to the exhibition is Hex, a one-hour performance presented on April 12 and 27, 2-3PM, in which I construct and topple a sculpture composed of 88 piano keys, arranged in a cross-hatched formation. This repetitive gesture—a nod to Yvonne Rainer’s task-based performance practice—draws from my 2023 experimental work, Hex & Defense. Here, destruction becomes ritual, and the act of rebuilding carries the weight of emotional labor and endurance.

Preceding each performance of Hex, I host a Trash Abatement and Community Clean-Up (1–1:30PM), inviting the public to engage in collective care through neighborhood trash collection. These small, visible acts of reuse and repair are core to my public art practice and a vital expression of environmental and social responsibility.

The exhibition closes with a Closing Reception & Community de-INSTALL on May 4, where participants are invited to carefully remove and re-roll the tape installation—returning materials to the artist for future use and underscoring the project’s cyclical, collaborative ethos.

skin hunger is a meditation on what we build together, what we discard, and how we show up for one another through the gestures that connect us. It is also an invitation—to touch, to topple, to tape, and to witness. These works live in the tension between care and collapse, resistance and release.

— Kristin Putchinski

Piano: is a series of actions, performances and sculptures that utilize pianos as the primary objects through which I explore concepts of tension, transformation and release. It is a trifold process of unmaking, playing and remaking. Pianos are rich in symbolic meaning.

Theme & Variation originated from my desire to challenge my traditional training in this instrument and to express some of my experience of recovery from profound encounters with violent trauma.

Using a single Young Chang U121, I created two experimental music video performances (“Hex & Defense” and “Reaping & Sowing”) before I disassembled the instrument completely. From the pieces, I created 12 new sculptural works. These videos are viewable upon request, with clips available at www.kricket.me

In Reaping and Sowing, I perform repetitive gestures and movements for 6 minutes–twice–on top of a deconstructed piano that is situated flat on its back and lifted up by small white wooden blocks. By removing and “planting” the keys between the taut strings, I produce momentary, distinct sculptures, as well as sounds and silences from both the harp and the body of the instrument.  Rhizomatic and ritualistic, I invite witnesses to receive information from multiple vantage points. I challenge my traditional approach to music making and the cultural emphasis on exigency.  Using the boundaries of both my body and the piano, I explore the space between chaos and control; between frustration and catharsis; between intention and accident.

For this performance, I use a timer to structure the performance and I alternate between urgency and deliberation in the removal/replacement of the keys. My costume is designed to place visual emphasis on a specific part of my body. I utilize task-based performance. Reaping and Sowing (Fast/Slow) is a video loop diptych of the performance, filmed from an overhead perspective.

Stripe Dances is a platform for creating images, performances and interactions with a wall that is “striped” using colorful painter’s tape. I explore the transformation of materials and the intersection of performance, photography, and text. I experiment with colorful painter's tape, initially creating striped walls that serve as interactive backdrops for performance and photography.

Once the tape’s purpose is fulfilled, I remove it and repurpose it into sculptural scrolls. These scrolls, made of Tyvek or long paper, are adorned with twisting tape to mimic the texture of oil paint. I use this medium to craft short essays, blurring the boundaries between visual art, written word, and tactile experience, inviting viewers to engage with both form and content.

The Camera Eats First is a video loop projected onto a dinner plate, surrounded by utensils and other ephemera that indicate a meal.  The projector is “seated” at the table, facing its own reflection in a mirror.  The projection is an abstraction of images of a week’s worth of meals as an emotional exploration of loneliness during the global COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing humanitarian catastrophe.

Piano: Release is a controlled action where I will position an upright piano at the top of a set of concrete steps and release it, causing it to fall or tumble and potentially break apart. Pianos are rich in symbolic meaning and this work is inspired by my desire to challenge my own traditional approach to this specific instrument and my experience of physical, psychological, and spiritual healing from violent trauma.

The concept of this work is to capture the chaotic sound from *inside* the piano as it tumbles violently, for just a few seconds.  A massive spectacle all for the "reward" of a few seconds of sound.

This action is to be my second major artistic experiment using the medium of performance art and this specific large object and I have proposed this action to take place in the amphitheater space adjacent to the CADVC at UMBC (Baltimore, MD) as a necessary part of my artistic practice and an expression of creative speech. The action will be recorded through sound and still photographs or video.

As I work to secure funding and permits for this work, I decided to experiment with the location and the a simple pine wood structure in the shape and size of an upright grand piano. The video and the screen shots below are documentation of this “Rehearsal.”