.png "Menu")
Artist Presentation - Katerina Papazissi
copyright: Alexandros Koromilas, TACMEDIA
P+A: Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work?
There are a lot of influences in my work. I am inspired by artists of diverse media and styles. My first influences came from the German Expressionists and the Abstract Expressionists. I took their instinctual approach and their intensity of feeling. Other influences were women artists, especially those of the 70s and 80s but also Frida Kahlo and Sarah Lucas. From them I inherited an approach based on bodily experience and their questioning of visual stereotypes. Over the years I was drawn to more minimal and conceptual approaches, and Anish Kapoor, Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Gordon Matta Clark, Jan Dibbets and Juliao Sarmento became major influences. Their work led me to focus on the fragment and the concept of space. The surrealists’, in particular Man Ray and Rene Magritte’s, way of turning the familiar to something unfamiliar or uncanny is also an influence in my work. I am also studying old masters such as da Vinci, Courbet, Rubens, Rodin, Romantic painters such as Turner and also byzantine icons and other religious paintings, especially those by William Blake and El Greco.
P+A: Is there anything you consistently draw inspiration from?
I draw inspiration from my experiences. What is happening in my life, my desires, memories, feelings, relationships. My body, movement and dance, the urban landscape, nature and its forms. Other Art and philosophy are also an inspiration.
P+A: What are the pros and cons in being an artist?
The pros of being an artist is that you can spend your day on your own working on what you really love. When a sensation, a feeling, an idea find their way to become visualized in a work it is a most fulfilling experience. The cons are the other side of the coin. That is, sometimes I feel very isolated. When the work is not developing as I would like it to, it is a very stressful experience that I unfortunately carry with me to the rest of my life and to my relationships. It is an all-consuming vocation and, still, not one that pays the bills.
P+A: If you were to stop making art what would you replace it with?
The only thing I would replace it with is dancing, and that is also an art so maybe this doesn’t count as an answer.
P+A: When do you consider that a piece of artwork has finished?
When I can’t see anything more I could add or subtract from it. Sometimes it takes a lot of trial and error, a lot of losses and a lot of rejected pieces to make the final piece. Other times the process flows more rapidly. When a work is finished it kind of stops demanding my time and attention. In a sense it is detached from me. There is a sense of contentment.
P+A: Are you fond of experimentation? (eg. use of different medias)
Very much. In the past I have experimented with a lot of different media (installation, performance, video). All of this experience is integrated into my current work. I still experiment a lot, moving among different media, using different kinds of painting mediums, different materials, different collage approaches, different canvas sizes, turing my photographs into sculpture. Lately, I am experimenting with A-Block, a construction material. I am always experimenting with my work as installation in space.
"That that is not" is the first solo exhibition of artist Katerina Papazissi. The exhibition takes place at the studio of the artist (31st Praxitelous rd., 2nd floor) until 23rd December 2014. Curators of the exhibition are Georgia Voudouri and Maria Yiayiannou. More info about the exhibition you can read in the post.
