ARTIST’S APPROACH
Roula Partheniou’s largely sculptural practice centres on an exploration of the replica, calling into question the language of everyday objects and the ways that we read and decipher our environment. Her installations, which are often site-specific, utilize mechanisms such as optical illusion, associative play, visual similes, material puns, colour cues, and the double-take to draw an alternate logic from commonplace materials and to deconstruct the experience of perception.
THE ARTWORK
Twofold
Installation, 2016
Twofold is an installation comprised of a series of wall-mounted replicas of common household objects that have been rendered as if viewed in double-vision (each individual object is displaced horizontally, vertically or diagonally onto itself) with a near-identical set of objects installed in a mirror-image on the facing wall. Not only are the objects in double-vision, so is the entire installation.
When viewed up close, subtle difference can be found between the replicas and their foils. This inevitably leads to a “double-take” moment caused by confronting an object that doesn’t quite line up with one’s memory or expectation of it. This in-between space of cognition, between a thing and the representation of that thing, becomes a literal tangible gap in the exhibition space. There are several layers of veracity in this work that presents a copy and its double, in double vision, all at once.
Curator : Art Souterrain
