Page 42 - Collectanea

NINA PAPACONSTANTINOU
b. 1968, Athens. Lives in Athens. Between the Lines IV, 2006
Between the Lines V, 2006
My work explores the relationship between marks and text and texture.
In my text-based work I approach text as an image, therefore I try to minimize or eliminate all information that would serve the very purpose of communicating meaning through text. The text goes through different sorts of transformation in order to become illegible, and then I trace or hand copy a blurred image or a dense texture of it, to reveal what language itself generates: a deceptive imagery.
Part of my work makes use of enlarged photocopies of text or drawings, which I then trace on paper. I see tracing as a process of manual reproduction of enlarged copies, a time-based process which reverses the procedure from manual to digital (scanner) or mechanical (photocopier). It is an attempt to literally trace back to the origins of marks and the uncanny background or depth behind them.
Certain text drawings make more direct reference to the handwritten copy through the use of carbon paper to transcribe entire books to paper, reducing them to one single surface. The superimposed layers of text reveal a certain shape of the book copied and create a new surface that turns language as a system of codes back into undecipherable information. The idea of the handwritten copy or the reproduction of texts alludes to the painstaking labor of the monastic scribes, ironically reversing the outcome since the drawings only reflect an image of the text and not the text itself.
In Between the Lines I used two layers of text (the fairy tale Tom Thumb) printed on transparent paper. By blowing up certain tiny areas between letters I came up with these images, which I then photocopied in large scale, and traced with pencil on transparent paper. In this case I aimed for the work to reflect visually a literal approach to the concept of reading between the lines. It is as if by enlarging the text, one could immerse oneself in the text and discover some hidden meaning that one couldn’t see or perceive otherwise.
The hand reproduces the image in a reversed time-consuming procedure, in an attempt to record and understand the image by means of memory and by physical engagement.
Nina Papaconstantinou
Artist Website: www.ninapapaconstantinou.gr
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