Athanasios Argianas presents the series Clay Pressings, which is related to an idea of recording, and an approximation of the process of imagination itself.

Much in the way that a hand written text is a recording of a set of verbal thoughts, these wall-based relief works are created through a process whereby the artist presses objects directly into clay to make a mold, pushing clay out, like buiding a negative, to cast into a positive.

It is a somewhat blind process which requires imagining a positive form derived from the removal of material, like a blind drawing in space..

The objects are then cast in composite resins, and electroformed in copper, chrome, or cast in synthetic plaster. The behaviour of the surface of clay rendered in materials entirely alien to clay creates a textural hybrid. Indentations are cast into protrusions, and scrapes and cuts are cast into lines. The process suggests a tactile viewing, whereby objects create visual sequences and form structure.

As in much of Argianas’s work, patterns suggest a score or other codified language. Here, they refer to both very ancient forms of writing, cuneiform tablets or quipu, fossils, and simultaneously 3D prints, due to the serrated character of their build.

Jen Kabat writes, in Species Counterpoint (Lenz press 2021):

“Clay Pressings” record the imprints of an action,

a residue, the memory of a stroke or touch in a

different realm. The memory of language."