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KOSTAS KIRITSIS
Artist's Books
Curated
by Mercedes Vicente
September 5 - 27, 2003
Reception: Friday, September 5, 6 - 9pm
Curator's Talk: Saturday, Sept. 27, 4pm,
Open to the Public
Gallery Hours: Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
12 - 5pm
There is a compelling attraction for many artists to gather
their sketches and words into a book. Whether to keep a diary, to introduce
narration or to play with animation as in the case of flipping books,
the book has been a common and popular medium among artists. And for
the curator, artists' books present the challenge of searching for display
strategies to show them in the context of a gallery, while books seem
to belong in libraries and are experienced at best in the intimacy of
a reading room. I have been eager to find ways of exhibiting artists
books that, while conscious of their preservation, would not preclude
the desire of holding the book in your lap, allowing your fingers feel
the paper and passing the pages over at your own pace.
Kostas Kiritsis, a Greek artist raised in Poland, engages
in a very personal journey that invokes his interest in Eastern cultures
and travels, and takes the form of photographic diaries. Exemplary of
his work is the book of his series "Beyond Horizon," a photographic
report of his trip to Mongolia.
Yet Kostas deals only with the realm of images. His noncompliance
with the written world is manifested in his decision to once paint white
every page of every book he had collected over the years. This Olympian
gesture, according to the artist, aimed to achieve a state of tabula
rasa, proved to be both utopic and unattainable, since the books turned
white only to be filled again with photographs of his trips, clippings
of news and other memorabilia. As a result, knowledge is replaced by
experience, the written by the visual, and the objective by the personal.
His is as much a conceptual move as it is a formal one. The white books
are beautiful objects, like canvases, and displayed together in his
studio in Poland become installations which Kostas documented in photographs
that they themselves turned into books.
Mercedes Vicente, Curator
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