Public Work

A One-Minute Silence, on Kifisias Avenue

If to the Infinite you want to stride
Just walk to the Finite to every side.

Goethe

In his classic work The Sense of Order, E. H. Gombrich wrote in 1979:
“There must be some relationship between ease of construction and ease of perception, a relationship responsible both for the repeated rhythm of patterns and for the pleasure we can derive from more complex constructions, from representations that do not appear boringly obvious, but which we continue to perceive as the application of underlying laws. But why should this give us pleasure? What theory of perception would we need in order to make this correlation between construction and perception comprehensible?”

It is also evident that Hamlet’s saying “the readiness is all” should be a life’s maxim: man has often been compared to a homeostatic instrument striving for equilibrium with its environment.

I first saw the intention behind Erietta Vordoni’s sculptural installation Sky Hunters in fragmented form at the Gavalas foundry in Maroussi. Disjointed columns of white metal, interrupted by the oversized spheres of an invisible abacus in celestial blue. Sturdy ridgelines stretching vertically, decoding a prehistoric tree-worship ritual. Models of swallows in cardboard boxes, awaiting free flights eastward, fragments of another Spring Fresco. The soft, assuredly shaped cheek of a young girl sitting on a midday ledge. The undulating tassels of an unripe tightrope walker, a hesitant sky hunter in elliptical orbit around his own axis.

I leafed through the preliminary designs, the first utterly freehand, the next to scale. Marked sheets of metal, shavings of aluminum. Successive layers of matter made of transparencies, faint rustlings of paper sliding across metallic surfaces. The rest, made of clouds and water.

Several weeks later, with Gombrich’s phrases still in mind, with the notion of man as a homeostatic mechanism striving for balance with its environment, I spoke with Vordoni about her sculpture and about the “most beautiful place” in the world: the Philothei of her childhood, where on weekends, boys and girls from different boys’ and girls’ schools would play cops and robbers together in the town square. About the memories of the stone-built family home with its wooden staircase, the orchard with its aging trees. On a fig tree, a swing tied, which reached back then with almost mathematical precision up to the sky. And again. And almost. Until the ropes’ creaking turned to chirring, a rustle, utter silence…

I ask her about the relationship between Painting and Sculpture in her work, about the balances that develop.
“There’s an absolute relationship,” she replies. “I work with forms, voids, textures. And if I feel that a particular moment in the painting process has reached its end, it’s almost a relief to return to sculpture. I enjoy the transition to another dimension, the organic, redemptive relationship of the body with materials.”

But this complex relationship with materials is also present in her painting. Asking again, she responds:
“I love the fusion of different materials. Each has its own language. Metal is a hard material, often acting like a mirror. Its relationship with paper creates a different condition. Observing the relationships between materials, I can’t help but reflect that our very lives are a merging of often contradictory elements that ultimately manage to express reality. And naturally, when the painting process concludes — from the moment I’ve created the language — the materials evaporate, cease to matter, and the viewer is invited to see a wholeness.”

As our conversation continues, the issue of space dominates. In Vordoni’s painting, the designated space and the figures inhabiting it do not always constitute clearly distinct entities: the figures often emerge from the composition at moments you don’t expect them.
When asked whether she starts from the space or from the person, she offers the anticipated response:
“Definitely from the space. I mold a space where sometimes there’s not even a canvas. I’m interested in the transparency of plexiglass, its relationship with the warmth of velvety fabric, the rustle of paper, the hardness of metal. By merging materials, each with its own reason for being and its own flow, a world is created in which these converge. Where often one material softly slips around and embraces another, and at other times they confront each other. Thus, they create a space, another canvas, where often the figures stir from within and decide themselves where they’ll emerge. In exactly the same way, the objective in sculpture is to shape space as a whole.”

A key concern for Vordoni in Sky Hunters was to create a work that would characterize Philothei — Philothei as a nest made of secret gardens, Philothei as a pivotal passage from suburb to city and vice versa. And a work that, when seen, would be simultaneously very close and very far from the gaze, of a seemingly small scale that progressively becomes vast. Its total 7.5 meters are clearly visible from the avenue, instantly readable by passing drivers, yet equally tangible up close.

With thoughts of city dwellers leaving the suburbs, moving along the main avenue, necessary notes included marking direction, involvement in the flow, and choosing escape routes into greenery. Early notes also cited the need for water, the desire for the liquid element to reflect, to organize energy, to dictate movement, to allow for fluidity.

Important too is the issue of repetition, that calming “sense of order” Gombrich spoke of, often responsible for the repeating rhythm of patterns: in the repetition of the vertical element, there’s perhaps a veiled intent to connect with Zongolopoulos’s sculptural composition marking the entrance to Psychiko… Vordoni confirms this, pointing out the transition of water in the space and a step toward the sky, and our conversation turns to swallows.

“Immediately, swallows came to mind,” she explains. “Drivers leaving the suburb, stuck for long periods at the traffic light — it was natural for the sculpture to seek a pulse, energy.”
Thus appeared the swallows, promising a free flight, an unconditional migration to freedom. The material chosen for them — as for the human figures — was aluminum, containing a shine and lightness that for Vordoni identifies with optimism.

Once the suburb was defined, came the need to integrate the tree element into the composition. A bronze trunk was placed — an earthy, warm, lived-in material — a cylindrical sculpture in the color of rust representing the ancient tree that continues to bloom and from which water springs. Its surface bears lines and incisions.
“Many passersby sit on it, mistaking it for wood,” Vordoni explains.

Then, children entered the work. It’s a point where the schools’ exits converge, a place of gathering, of midday encounters. From this emerged the idea of the young person, the deep blue identified with youth as well as with water. The young Sky Hunter, perched, balances precariously on a ball symbolizing fate, destiny. A ball shimmering with light — he chases his goals, explores the uncertain poetics of the avenue, buoyed by possibility, shadowed by the weight of responsibility. The decisions are his alone.
The girl sitting on the ledge, the passerby carrying positive feminine energy entering the work — she somehow interrupts its isolation, communicates its presence to the viewers: the ledge she occupies, after all, is the only place where a passerby can also sit, becoming absorbed into the work.

I try to imagine Vordoni’s work in the passage of time. I ask her how she envisions it functioning over its duration.
“I would above all like it to function amicably,” she replies. “To see passersby stop and sit, converse with the seated girl, seek respite from the heat in summer, live with it.”

As I leave, I remember two lines of Goethe’s:
“If you want to stride towards the infinite, then traverse the finite in every direction…”

And I walk away, leaving behind Erietta Vordoni’s Sky Hunters to explore boundaries, to joyfully gallop toward the infinite.

— Iris Kritikou, November 2006