E C H O E S

Art Installation | Naxos 2020 | Athens 2021 | Italy 2022

The original inspiration for the art installation “ECHOES” dates back to several years ago. The question I am aspiring to pose is whether artistic creation only refers to the end product of an art project, or rather to the entire journey leading up to that final destination, the process towards that end product, which encompasses the artists’ thought processes and inner workings of their soul. 

In the installation I use the term ECHOES metaphorically. As a storytelling of the chronicle of a creation. Just as automatic writing in poetry is not merely a random listing of words but rather a reflection of the poet’s inner truth, so is the painter’s wiping his or her paintbrush, daubing one colour next to or over the other, an unconscious but hardly random act, immediately a work of art in its own right. It is an aesthetic combination rooted in the depths of the artist’s soul, faithfully serving the ultimate objective and essence of art – to evoke emotions. 

New painting compositions are freely born, unmediated and unconstrained by the rules of logic, acting as parallel stories, intrinsically linked to the artistic end result. A composition born of other compositions, like an echo reverberating the narrative of their story. ECHOES is an attempt to answer the aforementioned question by creating a sort of sculpture using the pieces of cloth with which, the last 10 years, I wipe off my brushes when I paint. These rags have been individually photographed, isolating specific parts of them that act as new painting compositions in and of themselves. 

The new compositions have then been compiled in a video that is projected on a screen. This screening aims to help viewers notice these new painting compositions that have emerged on the rags, while also displayed in the same exhibition space are paintings serving as the “end products” of the artistic process. The ultimate objective of the coexistence of live artworks on display and on-screen images is to instigate a discourse between “process” and “end result,” so that viewers may formulate their own answers to the original question by interactively participating in the installation.

“A storytelling of the chronicle of a creation”

© Milena Dimitrokallis  2023
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