Mathijs Stegink (Netherlands) "Concentrating on this sheet, is concentrating on the present. Trying to peer through the lattice-work imbued with meaning without being seduced into reading the images or text. When we try to look at paper the text becomes a troublesome screen. What confuses us is the switching back and forth between our interpretational system (which takes us to another here and now) and the observation of current, visible reality. The invention of paper as a carrier of text made script mobile. Paper is a means with which to transport text. Text itself is a means with which to record, to arrange and manage information. Paper is therefore a medium that carries another medium. In the hierarchy of perception, an inscribed sheet of paper is ranked higher than a blank sheet of paper. We are inclined to read first, then we see. Do letters and symbols give us more important information than direct observation? Text is nothing without its carrier; text cannot exist without a surface. The computer makes it even more confusing. Previously we read from black screens covered in luminous green letters; now the computer imitates a white sheet of paper. It imitates a medium that is a vehicle for another medium. Mathijs Stegink’s installations exhibit similar confusing relationships between script and carrier, text and meaning, the literal and the metaphorical. The blurred divisions between those relationships form the ‘text’ of the installations. While the exhibition space becomes the ‘carrier’ or the ‘margin’." From: Timeless Paper, Leiden 2002 © Compres Publishers Ltd