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The Americas Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Prints 2008 Selections for Exhibition |
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Self-Portrait II Xenophon Sachinis |
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| Artist's Statement | ||
The two small, three-dimensional prints sent to The Americas Biennial Exhibition, represent the present stage of my work based on a series of self-portraits. The presence and the importance of the matrix material is obvious. The idea of the printing action is present by my digitally printed photo. The shape of the engraved parts of the matrix correspond to the digitally printed shape of the self-portrait, but the characters of the engraved and printed traces do not correspond, as the engraved part of the creation is completely different to the one that refers to the printed one. Still, the ideas of engraving and printing can be found under the same roof, and this is why I regard my works as ‘prints’. The self-portraits have close connection with art history and are full of strong self-criticism, and cynicism. I am a railway modeler, and this is why I chose the train presence for my subjects. There is also a famous work by G. Kounelis, a very well known Greek artist, where a steam loco is getting out of his mouth. The reference to Kounelis’ specific work can be easily seen, even though the spirit of the art thesis is completely different. Closing this text, I wanted to make a small statement concerning printmaking and its perception. I say that every one of us has done printmaking unconsciously. The wounded, bloody knee of a child is the matrix, and the gauze of the wound is the print. With this wide horizon, where printmaking has the right, not only to be involved with present day aesthetics, but to create its own, I arrived at this thesis: always be respectful to the idea of a matrix and its tangible memory--the print.
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| Statement of Artistic Process | ||
Where can we find the truth in modern printmaking? Is the truth hidden only in the idea of the printed paper, or not? I believe that modern printmaking has the right to be involved with the present day plastic problems that concern art today. That means, we can perceive printmaking with a much wider spectrum than we used to perceive it before. For example, we used to say that the printed paper was a goal, and we were leaving apart everything that was concerned with the matrix, or plate. A tremendous amount of artistic work was done upon the matrix surface, but no value was attached to it. We did not take into consideration our personal pleasure working on the plate, and we focused only on the printing process since what we did on the plate surface had no other aim than to prepare it for the final step of the printing process. Evidently, we left apart all of the plastic values that are hidden in the plate, and that represent the material and its plastic behaviour that even gives its name to the different classic printmaking techniques. Almost twelve years ago, I started using plexiglass as the proper material for my drypoints. Its transparency reminded me of the fight between oblivion and memory. What we carve, etch, or engrave, resists me more to the degradation and destruction of time. So printmaking, in a way, serves the idea of memory. Staring from this axiom, I regard the printed paper as the tangible memory of the printing action. The plexiglass can be used to construct a three-dimensional cube, a safe, where the print can be put and protected infinitely. This is the key step that I used for the evolution of my recent work. The first series was given the name ‘memory safes’, and it was a whole of transparent cubes that contained the tangible memory of the engraving action, stemmed from the plexiglass plates. Later on, I use the transparency’s qualities to avoid the use of the press. In order to have an edition, I place two mirrors on the vertical sides of a transparent cube. Between them, I install an engraved and inked, transparent plate. The two mirrors multiply the idea of the transparent plate ad infinitum. So we have concentrated on the interior of a ‘memory safe’ the ideas of the engraving action, the printing action, and the edition, without the use of the press. Then, the next step was the illumination of the printing process. And, this was achieved by using, once more, the plexiglass transparency as the key factor for the composition. The use of the press was replaced by the activity of light. A beam of electric light passes through the transparent, engraved and inked plate, and vertically projects the shadow of the plate traces on the surface of a white paper placed on the bottom of a plexiglass made cube. Finally, the cube becomes the vital space where we realize the plastic ‘scenario’. After this stage, I went on combining the digital print with the essential printmaking technique: drypoint. This time, the engraved and inked cube was placed under shallow water. The sunlight passes through, and its deflection creates a completely unforeseen situation that the human eye could not captivate. The use of a small, analogue camera revealed the physical phenomenon that took place. Slides were shot, scanned, and then, printed digitally. Now, we have the idea of the engraved matrix, and the idea of printing, that do not correspond to the matrix. An artistic action [the engraved, inked plate placed under water] is combined with a physical phenomenon [the deflected light], documented with a camera, and finally gives birth to new aesthetic phenomena performed by the digital print. The strict inked engraved lines are turned into surface. All these thoughts were stimulated by the strong belief that the internal aesthetic forces of printmaking were not yet explored since printmaking was always, after painting, the reproduction and the artistic edition of a painted image.
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| Bio | ||
Xenofon Sachinis was born in 1954 in Thessaloniki, Greece. He studied Printmaking & Stage Design at the School of Fine Arts in Athens, Greece, graduating with Honours in 1978, and continued his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France [1981–85]. He is Associate Professor of Printmaking, and the Director of the Printmaking Workshop, at the School of Fine Arts of Thessaloniki University, Greece. He was a speaker at IMPACT 2003 in Cape Town, South Africa, and the recipient of the Prize for Printmaking at the XIX Biennial in Alexandria, Egypt. He presented his work in the National Museum of Art in Poznan, Poland, during IMPACT 2005, and was a speaker at the IMPACT 2007 conference in Tallinn, Estonia. In 1997, he co-founded [with E. Giannadakis] the Printmaking Center of Neapolis in Thessaloniki, Greece, and since 2006 he has been the Artistic Director of the Neapolis Printmaking Center, where he organizes exhibitions, artist residencies, and is delegated with the administration of eight European ERASMUS exchange cultural programs. Associate Professor of Printmaking, School of Fine Arts, Thessaloniki University, Greece Education 2007 2006
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Copyright © 2008 The Americas Biennial Exhibtion