Photocopies Directly from Matter, 1980–1982
291 photocopies
ΕΜΣΤ Collection
Donated by the artist 2014
Photocopies Directly from Matter emerged from the artist’s attempt to classify the material makeup of her immediate urban surroundings, linking to the series Samples from Urban Landscape, which she presented at Desmos Art Gallery in 1982. In Samples from Urban Landscape, Papaspyrou created wall installations composed of found objects she picked up along her daily commute, classified by material: paper, plaster, metal, and wood. As the artist writes about this period: “I began using wood, pieces of asphalt, sheet metal, stripped wall fragments, fabric, nylon—the materials/elements of the urban landscape, which is the actual landscape that city dwellers see every day without really seeing it.” In preparation, she photocopied the objects individually or arranged in groups, compiling an archive of materials that we now recognise as typical of Athens’ architectural identity. Interspersed among these images are photocopies of the artist’s hand and face, documenting the very act of photocopying while also positioning the human body as a structural element of the urban environment.
“Geographies”, “episodes”, “samples”, or “images in matter” are different terms that Rena Papaspyrou has used to describe the core strands of her artistic practice from the late 1960s to the present day. The artist uses light pencil or marker to make subtle interventions into the remnants of urban decay she collects—sheet metal, doors, planks, posters, wall fragments, mosaic tiles, dust—guiding the viewer to discover images already etched into the material through wear, corrosion, or the passage of time. Following the artist’s gaze, the viewer is transported into a hallucinatory visual microcosm filled with accidental narratives. Rena Papaspyrou’s work reveals a new way of seeing the world, in which the sense of the sublime and the extraordinary can emerge from a peeling wall, a crumpled sheet of metal, or a wrinkled piece of paper.
Rena Papaspyrou was born in 1938 in Athens, where she lives and works.
