The Covid Files [EN]
Created during the Covid-19 pandemic-lockdown the photo collages of Konstantinos Markogiannis are neither exactly a translation of the ongoing health crisis, nor a set of documenting machines, in any conventional point of view: they continuously oscillate, always operating in the in-between, reflecting the transformative operations of the collective psyche.
Existing in a state of spatial anguish and collapsed boundaries, these portraits of spectral entities merge subject and space: most of their parts are eerily vectored into a darkened, multi-layered facade and express the kind of invasive spatiality that is occasionally observed in the art of the mentally unstable.
Multifaceted physiognomies appear to function as nostalgic machines, in a manner of a mechanical bricolage, where specific components are chosen – out of a jumble of seemingly leftover and dismantled parts – in order to perform a new, specific tracing or translating task, regardless of their initial use and the task they were meant to perform. Thus, the artist becomes a mythmaker of narratives which deliver an uncanny tension, both visual and psychological – a true expression of the ongoing public health crisis.
-Text by Spyridon Kaprinis