There is a small island in the northern part of the Dodecanese that once was a place of exile for convicts when the Romans had occupied it from the Greeks. If one were to walk through the streets of the island of Patmos on an early June night, without even knowing it’s history; a feeling of present absence hovers over and one may start to take notice of the ruins in the midst of the island’s empty streets. These ruins speak of a world once foreign to the present but soon one comes to realize that past and present are sharing glimpses of each other.
In an installation piece titled ‘NO EXIT’ the viewers walk into a somewhat small rectangular space whose walls and floor are all painted grey apart for a section on the left where a rusted, steel archway-like, artifact, frames a white area of the wall whose shape and size is parallel to that of the steel archway. The idea for this piece came to me after thinking of the Patmian, island doors and how often, while walking in the small side streets, one will see what once were entrance and exit ways into houses, cemented shut. Originally I wanted to create a double reading to the peace in which the area exerted an illusory feeling of a space turned inside-out suggesting a non-functioning exit implying either that an opening was once present and at some point cemented shut or, it could also be read as a call to framing a point of exit.
In an installation piece titled ‘NO EXIT’ the viewers walk into a somewhat small rectangular space whose walls and floor are all painted grey apart for a section on the left where a rusted, steel archway-like, artifact, frames a white area of the wall whose shape and size is parallel to that of the steel archway. The idea for this piece came to me after thinking of the Patmian, island doors and how often, while walking in the small side streets, one will see what once were entrance and exit ways into houses, cemented shut. Originally I wanted to create a double reading to the peace in which the area exerted an illusory feeling of a space turned inside-out suggesting a non-functioning exit implying either that an opening was once present and at some point cemented shut or, it could also be read as a call to framing a point of exit.
