Ioanna Pantazopoulou creates ephemeral sculptural monuments and large installations that aim to disrupt, and challenge the habitual approach one takes to spaces and objects. She explores the physical and functional properties of materials and discarded objects.
“A predominant concern essential for the development of my work is the ‘scouting’ for these materials, which is carried out through extensive research. It is important for me to know the origin of my materials, their original use, how they work, how they got to my hands, their ‘story’. For me this is a social, political and cultural curiosity. Through the use of unwanted and discarded materials, I investigate the way in which waste is mutually proportionate to luxury and how both are dependant on economic wealth and excess production.
Once these surplus materials become available they turn into ‘building’ materials. Spontaneity, experimentation, trial and error, become vital tools for the process of the work. The experience of disorder is manifested throughout by the re-inventing of rules. My sculptures are created in situ therefore the surrounding space becomes a vital component to the work. Due to their ephemeral nature, the sculptures leap between dimensions. They often, finally collapse into photographic images whereby the ‘after-life’ of the work takes a different form and exists in the form of one photographic shot. Next, the sculpture gets destroyed.
The sculptures follow the principles of architecture without being trapped in them. They overturn the notion of experience and participation, they attempt – through unexpected collisions – to create new connections between the past and the present, of what is lost and found. “
