City of Athens Art Gallery, Building B | September 29-
November 20, 2022
The exhibition Phantoms by Nina Papakonstantinou, presented by the Municipality of Athens from September 29 to November 20 at the City of Athens Art Gallery, curated by the City of Athens Culture, Sports and Youth Organization, includes the artist’s new work along with a selection of representative works from the last twenty years.
From 2000 to date, Nina Papakonstantinou has examined in detail the relationship between text and image while at the same time exploring drawing as a set of signs, impressions and tracings. “Writing, copying and imprinting” (to quote an indivisible triad of gerunds used by her to describe her work), the artist uses a paper surface to draw successive inscriptions and transcriptions that highlight how fascinating the trace and materiality of writing are. In addition, Papakonstantinou’s copies, transcriptions and tracings generate a wave of associations and connotations, making the viewer think about the mental perception processes that turn a text into an image and those of an image derived from a text.
In Papakonstantinou, the lure of writing intersects with the pleasure of copying. The artist recognises this lure in letter and diary writing. Hence both genres feature prominently in her work. Her drawings are characterised by the discourse of absence (love letter, suicide note) and the overwhelming discourse (prison or incarceration diary). In Papaconstantinou’s works, the cryptic texts continue to exist as “cyclical memories”, essentially expressing the viewer’s inability “to live outside the unfinished text”. Looking at her drawings, one finds oneself participating in a spiral of references that seem to have no end. Each project, in other words, triggers an uninterrupted sequence of connections. Papakonstantinou’s drawings raise questions about the usefulness of reading the text and how writing is reproduced; in this regard, it is not an exaggeration to say that the artist copies like a robot or a sewing machine.
The title of Papakonstantinou’s exhibition at the City of Athens Art Gallery is borrowed from Phantoms, works in pale blue, which are the lower surface of the works in the “Library“ series. Along with these phantoms of writing, which function as imaginary images, fiction on the border between presence and absence, the artist also presents other new works with an allusive mood, such as “We Will Not Be Silent”, inspired by the slogans of the women’s movement. The exhibition “Phantoms” presents a set of concepts that have governed Papakonstantinou’s work from her beginnings to the present day. According to her, these concepts are “the riddle and the secret, the silence between words, the essence and the meaning that constantly eludes us.” “It is an ongoing investigation into the fragmentary nature of communication, still one that opens up space for other, new writings and readings,” the artist notes.
Nina Papakonstantinou was born in Athens, where she lives and works. She studied Greek Literature in Athens and Fine Arts at Camberwell College of Arts in London. In 2015 she was artist-in-residence at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton. She has presented her work in many solo and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, including, among others: Home (double solo with Kostas Bassanos), Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center, Athens; Collectanea, Deree – The American College of Greece, Athens; Haft Paykar/Seven Beauties, Mohsen Gallery, Tehran; After Babel, Annex M, Athens Concert Hall; Under/erasure, Pierogi Gallery, New York; Multitudinous Seas, FondationHippocrène, Paris; Antidoron, Documenta 14, Kassel; NP Contemporary Life Seminars, Locus Athens, Athens; Typo (solo), Kalfayan Gallery, Athens; Quieter in Every Phrase (solo), Martine Aboucaya Gallery, Paris; Anti Writing (solo), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens; Heaven, 2nd Athens Biennale.
The exhibition is curated by ChristoforosMarinos, art historian and curator of exhibitions and activities of OPANDA.
The exhibition will be inaugurated on Thursday, September 29, 18:00-22:00
Duration of exhibition: September 29- November 20, 2022
Opening Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11:00 – 19:00, – Sunday 10:00 – 16:00. The exhibition will remain closed Mondays.
Free admission.