Constructions

Tattered Fragments, by Christina Ritchie, Exhibition Brochure for "Constructions", Open Studio, May  23 to June 21, 2014

Excerpt - Gallery Press Release:
In keeping with Partheniou's interest in the replica and material play, her series of prints titled Constructions look to the possibilities inherent in printmaking to mimic torn tape, taped corners, masked shapes, layered vellum and stuck paper. The prints appear as impromptu collages, as work in a preparatory state or part way through a process.  She employs a strategy familiar to her sculptural practice in her use of reductive allusions to material—inferring tape on paper on paper, layered materials and the shallow space of a collage.

Constructions is a series of prints that mimic modest materials that relate to the process of art making and that push and pull between abstract and referential, formal and practical, austere and provisional. At the threshold between abstraction and representation, the compositions can be read as both abstract minimalist compositions but also as still-life representations of paper and tape.