About
The Way Back
This page has no biography. It has a work — and inside it, the same way every other work here hides a poet, my own story is hidden.
The hidden text
Από τα πέντε μου ως τα δεκατέσσερα πήγαινα σε σχολή καλών τεχνών. Κέρδισα βραβεία πριν προλάβω να καταλάβω τι σημαίνουν. Μετά ήρθαν οι υπολογιστές και η ζωγραφική έμεινε πίσω — χωρίς τελετή, με την ιδέα ότι θα την ξαναπιάσω κάποια στιγμή. Κάποια στιγμή είναι μεγάλο διάστημα. Δεν γύρισα με το πινέλο· γύρισα από τον δρόμο που έμαθα στο ενδιάμεσο. Αυτό που κρατάς είναι ο τρόπος που βρήκα να ξαναγίνω ζωγράφος χωρίς να πάψω να είμαι αυτό που έγινα. In English, my rendering From the age of five until fourteen I went to an art school. I won prizes before I could understand what they meant. Then computers came and painting was left behind — with no ceremony, with the idea that I would pick it up again some time. Some time is a long interval. I did not come back with the brush; I came back by the road I learned in between. What you are holding is the way I found to become a painter again without ceasing to be what I became.
The only text in the series that is my own
Why this form
A logarithmic spiral grows without changing shape: you move away and remain the same. The biography is not written on this page — it is hidden inside the work, like everything else here.
The three words
When I sat down to think about how this work should look, I ended up with three. They are not decoration; they are the rules — and the third one hides a contradiction that turned out to be the whole subject.
- Symmetry
- Not a mirror. Sym-metria, common measure. The common measure here is the paper: A4, one to the square root of two. Drag the window and watch — the frames never distort; only how many fit changes. No other ratio does that.
- Geometry
- No form is drawn by hand. The wave, the sunflower, the labyrinth come from equations of a few lines. The same text and the same seed give the same sheet, always. My hand is in the choosing, not in the tracing.
- Logos
- Here is the trap, and I did not see it at once. √2 is not a ratio: the ancients called the diagonal of the square ἄλογον — without ratio, unspeakable — because it has no common measure with the side. It was the discovery that broke the Pythagoreans. So my paper is the one shape that cannot be measured by itself, and I write words on it. Rational text in irrational geometry.
Why on paper
It could stay a file. It does not. A file needs someone to open it with the right program; a printed sheet needs only light. There is error correction inside the paper, as on an optical disc — a smudge, a shadow, a scratch are not enough to lose the words.
If in fifty years someone finds one of these sheets in a drawer, they will not know what it is. But they will see it. And if they photograph it, they will read it.
The mathematics, for anyone: Ἄλογον