O n    B o d y s c a p e s  :  I n t e r v i e w   w i t h   E. H.

b y    S o t i   T r i a n t a p h y l l o u

In the past you had this tendency to paint large canvases, shapes that developed on wide walls; they kind of expanded beyond them; later on sizes shrank and you started to move into a world of fantasy.

In order to be viewed, large canvases and hanging works require the participation of the body. One walks through and around them. One can peek through folds and openings: vision is not taken for granted - one has to find an appropriate angle to actually see the works; the typical relationship between the viewer and the painting - the one being opposite the other- is cancelled. These are notions shared by most painters. When I first removed a work from the wall and hung it in space I realized that its limits changed, that I could paint its rear side as well.     

The light boxes are rather small because they suggest close observation and concentration, they sort of nod to the viewer to come closer.

It's funny how the large works with the inscribed texts on them function as diaries or maps of thought, or as fingerprints. You talk about fantasy when referring to the works that include organic elements, fluids, light. Now I am working on the idea of fluidness and "oddness" on large, "daring" paintings, so to speak. Whatever daring might mean. At the same time, I wonder what�s left to be done with painting. The two-dimensional field is massacred by thousands of years of marks on it. That's quite a challenge. It makes you think that your only weapon is that you are unique and different than any other painter in the world, and that it is this difference that will help you formulate a new aspect of the two-dimensional field. This year I paint on paper with layers of thin, watery acrylic, which are covered by glues and other pieces of paper. The surface is thoroughly painted and then removed in parts. This process is repeated several times so the paper gets traumatized by successive placing and removing. Based on processes like inserting, transmuting, erasing, restraining, allowing, diffusing, altering, provoking, choosing, multiplying, so common to genetics' biologists, I provoke the paintings to come about. In other words their appearance is predetermined by the process itself. I aim at paintings that depict the idea of carelessness, which, I suspect, characterizes genetics engineering nowadays.