Apple brick wall,1997, plaster,acrylic paint,dimension variable, installation: 250x500x300cm, each brick 15x11x25cm

Apple brick wall,1997, plaster,acrylic paint,dimension variable, installation: 250x500x300cm, each brick 15x11x25cm

The return of the freshness in Martha Dimitropoulou's sculpture

Some years ago, I was introduced to Martha Dimitropoulou's sculpture which consisted of shapes taken from the natural world, fruit in particular. In the main part of her work of that period, she used the processed form of the apple as building material for constructions in space - compact walls compiled of apple-shaped block series in a 3-dimensional space. No wonder these constructions had architectural dimensions: giant stuff underlined by their heavy material - plaster. Of course her aim was not only to encourage us to reconsider our place in the natural world.
In other samples of work, using painting or sculpture, she remoulded an extravagant blending of fruit. As a faithful distiller -sculptor that loves his prima matter, she insisted on drawing sketches which focused on the internal, hidden forms of the fruit. The references that were allowed to be made from the proximity of schemas, revealed feminine and masculine symbols, trompe l'oeil of recognisable but yet alienated models. These creations lied on the binary approach of two natures, (i.e. apple-banana, fruit-genital organ etc.). From a non-aesthetic point these constructions are the hell sign for our immoral right to do as we please with all other species, plants included. But here we simply enjoy nature's generous storage to provide us with so many possible fictions.

Furthermore, she produced fruit with modified shapes (i.e. square watermelons, huge tomatoes etc.), in order to highlight a "pop tenderness" as well as a sarcastic perception of the reality, which in our days is haunted by so-called genetic engineering or by the "post-human" condition in a wider sense. Square watermelons: a conjectural/plastic game, which borrows images from the natural world and "transfers" them to the aesthetics of "standardisation" of products. Piles of faux fruit placed on top of each other like commodities on a supermarket's shelves. During that period she was experimenting with materials such as - wood, plaster, pigments, fibreglass, modified photocopies.
One of her last researches was concerned with the juxtaposition between "eternal" and "ephemeral" conditions of form and illusion, through an extended investigation of the objects and the representations of consumer society. She was modifying used plastic objects by painting them in such a way as to create the illusion of a marble surface. These objects are packaging containers of various sizes; barrels, detergent boxes, milk boxes, refreshment bottles etc. The packaging containers were articulated in space with an architecture that can be characterised as "architecture of the remains"-a lot of debris of our recycled times.
Her practical work derives from questions about the nature of reality, and focuses on the interchange ability of real and imaginary, actual and virtual. Someone that hasn't got any connection with the process of the standartisation of the commodities should think that Dimitropoulou's pieces articulate the analogies and metaphors of the pictorial process. But the dreamlike atmosphere of the particular arrangements of the pieces suggest the condition of market aesthetics, within the context of the commercial language of showcases.
Objects which are members of familiar, repetitive and trivial worlds (i.e. objects for packages and standardised products), when "nicely" painted, are transformed by the painting on their surfaces and acquire an illusion of permanence and the requirement for the everlasting freshness of her sculptural objects.

Text by Camilo Kinka

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