Longing
Longing is an artist book closer to a sculpture than to a traditional codex. The covers are of white translucent Limoges porcelain, the 108 folios are of thin, bespoke Abaca paper with fragile deckles that extend beyond the covers. The binding is a traditional Coptic binding. The text is sparce; three fragments in six folios: fragment 251c is form Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus: …for it was once all feathered... in this process the whole soul throbs and palpitates…suffers when the growth of the feathers begins˙ [Plato, Phaedrus, 251c]; a second fragment is from a poem by Vandorou: …in the end · passion floods its valve · her cells · fill with · light · [she demateriazes]. The last fragment is a haunting phrase by the Philosopher Plotinus, the very last phrase in the last book of the Enneads: ...escape in solitude of the solitary. The text is printed using a variant of the Japanese maki-e technique for gilding on paper with precious metals (platinum and palladium). The remaining 100 folios are devoid of visual or written content, a reference to the sacred and the ineffable. Silk ribbons mark the beginnings of text in two languages, Greek and English.
Longing marks the beginning of the third part of a trilogy. Following Persefoneia, Vertical Time and Persephone’s Chamber, Longing represents a movement, from the underworld, the realm of shadows, of Hades and Persephone, to the upper world of earth and light. With metaphysical underpinnings, Longing references the Platonic evolution of the soul to higher realms through the gradual, painful growing of wings. On a symbolic level, it can be interpreted as referring to a person’s evolution towards a higher moral level, a return to a nonphysical birthplace.
Longing operates on a level of abstraction that connects with universal human emotions in a manner that transcends cultures and time. During the past several years, I have been increasingly striving to say more with less, and to choose materials, design, typography, and printing techniques with the criterion of how well they support the underlying concept regardless of effort or cost. The challenge is to explore the limits of this space, a more austere form of artistic expression and the boundaries between tangible and intangible forms of communicating our shared emotions. With Longing I move further from the comfort of visually intriguing platinotypes to abstraction and white on white minimalism. I feel this as a need and a conceptual imperative, to push the boundaries of my artistic practice by stripping my work of images, distilling the writings to a basic core.
While Longing exists alone in its clamshell enclosure with drummed vellum covers and interior linings, I also envision this artist book as part of a larger installation.
It is an installation of 12 artist books forming a semi-circle. The books are handmade with bespoke materials (manuscript quality vellum, limp vellum binding, translucent Abaca and Gampi papers, silk threads). They are devoid of visual or written content, amplifying the reference to the sacred and the ineffable. The 13th book is different; it is Longing, with its sculptural form of white porcelain covers, fragile folios and sparse, gilded text. It stands apart, in the middle of the semicircle of the books. The white porcelain shell of the 13th book references Chryssa’s Cycladic Books of white marble, and the stunning simplicity of prehistoric Cycladic figurines.