Writing for Websites:
Konstantinos Stamatiou,
Sculpture & Installation
Charts render data into three dimensions, recasting the tabular numeric. Spilled across x-/y-axes—themselves purely visual—are schemata derived from real, functional graphs: the activity of an alternative energy company traded on the New York Stock Exchange, salaries/earnings/profits of multinational corporations, the sweeping propulsion of weather patterns, or the mosaic of mineral deposits dotting the Yukon territory. Color, shape, and line combine to variously effect or abstract plotted points, intercepts movement, the whole composed of plastic water bottles, drinking straws, Plexiglas, electrical wires, staples, light, and even broken glass from the recent unrest in Athens.
The traditional chart format allows the human mind to grasp large amounts of information, perhaps at the expense of interpretation. In 2008, MoMA’s exhibition Design and the Elastic Mind asserted that contemporary human thought requires elasticity—"the product of adaptability plus acceleration"—to grasp the implications of our contemporary, data-driven lives. The Charts series feeds this acceleration, tames the data, situates the viewer temporarily, while the artist subtly interprets and transforms the experience. Charts do not only make one look, they make one look more intensely.
Light is mirrored back to the viewer through layered filigree and hints of color in Nacreum. Five parallel surfaces are showered with fine line and accented with bead work, effecting a mother-of-pearl luminance, and creating an intensely back-lit piece where no backlight is present.
Suggested is a place to be, among parallels for all possible views, or as in a mirror, where the mere illusion of light is light, its only source ambient.
Interstice represents the artist’s move toward light, toward transparency in a dense society. Former materials—wire, data, opaque plastics—are abandoned in favor of exploring what Anaxagoras called “appearances [that] are a glimpse of the unseen”: Five clear surfaces etched finely with white line, all similar but not same, are each offset slightly to compel a visual pause that celebrates, and does not flee, intricacy.
Space here is subtle yet primary, used as color might be used on canvas—mixed with the play of line and chance to produce new intervals, movement, mirrored sensations. A kaleidoscope of intersections brings harmony to the complexity, invoking the opposite of density, and allowing the elided to be seen.
Created solely from plastic water bottles cut into small units and stapled together, Wave disembodies content. Just as water is removed from its animating body when captured in plastic, the artist has removed the plastic, transformed it into a liquid state. The animating engine is now the vigorous play of light bouncing off, moving through, and substituting for lunar pull, returning movement to a wave aloft, deeply restless, and out of its element. Wave is deceptively graceful, a cautionary tale hung in midair: Plastic bottle becomes water, and, disturbingly, the container its own content.
For more on this artist's work, please visit www.konstantinostamatiou.com
