⁰¹ Theodoros Stamatogiannis, Untitled, 2011, wood,100 × 210 × 2.7 cm
⁰² Theodoros Stamatogiannis, Untitled, 2010, wood, door handle, hinges, 680 × 195 × 5 cm
⁰³ Theodoros Stamatogiannis, Untitled (Model-proposal for an installation), 2009, cardboard, wood, 42 × 52 × 41 cm
⁰⁴ Theodoros Stamatogiannis, Untitled, 2009, wood, hinges, 3.40 × 9.50 × 10.20 m
⁰⁵ Theodoros Stamatogiannis, Untitled, 2008, wood, 332 × 448 cm
⁰⁶ Theodoros Stamatogiannis, Untitled, 2006, table-tennis table, 274 × 152 × 74 cm
⁰⁷⁻⁰⁹ Theodoros Stamatogiannis, Untitled, 2011, print, 29 × 39 cm

Faye Tzanetoulakou: How do you perceive space and in what ways do you transform it into a sculptural object?

Theodoros Stamatogiannis: I always excelled in maths and geometry, and before sculpture I studied Economics in the Athens University of Economics and Business. This strengthened a mathematical approach to understanding things. A large part of maths is about relationships and how they are analysed. This is the way that I understand space, as a nexus of relationships. I am always considering the relationships between the materials and the components that structure architectural space and these are the ones that I use in my work. What I aim to do is highlight and question them through simple gestures that will give me the final form, either objects or installations.

FT: During your university studies, and even after that, we watch you using sculpture with a desire to overthrow the expectations of where do the physical limits of space stand, in large scale installations such as athletic stadiums standing vertically onto buildings, a door that extends across the room, the interior of a gallery being projected outside, or when the walls of a room rotate around the axis of a non-functional door firmly attached to the ground. Their ready-made quality, together with their industrial seemless form seem to carry a postminimalist appeal, yet it is hard not to notice their overtly paradoxical nature and the ambience of the ‘romantically unrealised’. It seems to me that the more you redistribute space the more you dispute and defy the rules of the game for architecture, concerning functionalism/utilitarianism on the one hand and aesthetic preoccupations on the other.

TS: Minimalism has been very important for my understanding of sculpture. Artists like Richard Serra and Carl Andre managed to define and condense the sculptural language through the minimum. In any way that I am working and whatever I end up doing, minimalism delimits me and shows me the rules that I have to respect. The most important thing is that it taught me how to work between sculpture and architecture without forgetting where I come from. On the other hand I use architecture as a source of inspiration. But I would say that in a way my work is an ironic comment about the way that architecture distributes space and dictates our perception of space. A comment that sometimes aims to abuse the basic principles of architecture and its function. I could very simply describe the way that I use and analyse architecture like this: You get a mechanical toy and you give it to a child. The child gets very excited and starts playing with it. After a while it gets bored and its interest turns to the way that the machine works. Thus it will dismantle the toy in order to discover what it is there. Next step the machine has been destroyed and the toy becomes something else. Maybe the child did not even get the answer. This how sometimes I end up until I find another toy.

FT: In relation to the previous question do your works function as proposals for a new architecture and art in general, and how?

TS: The nature of my work is not to create something new but to interpret what is already there. The verb interpret is related to something that pre-exists and that we discover and analyze. Thus my art is not a proposal for a new art, definitely not for a new architecture.

FT: You were shortlisted for last year’s DESTE prize, where you presented an impressive sunk relief of a door on the wooden floor of the Museum of Cycladic Art. Talk to us about the ideas behind the work.

TS: The work that I presented at DESTE negotiated the way that basic architectural components like doors and floors define space and shape spatial relationships that are in a way considered are a given. Like what my work in general does, it questions the boundaries of architecture and sculpture, something that this time I did by using the very traditional technique of relief. The relief has been always being a link between architecture and sculpture and going back through history, we can see that the way reliefs have been made takes into consideration the architecture of the space where they are supposed to be placed. It could be interpreted as an awareness of the way that architecture spreads out. This is the reason why I chose to place the relief on the floor and not on the ceilings or the walls, so that it altered its role navigating the viewer in the space. Thus this work has been very important as it examines the properties of my previous work through the consideration of new elements.

FT: During your recent participation in the ROOMS exhibition, organised by Kappatos gallery at St. George Lycabettus hotel in Athens, you presented a series of embossements on paper, each representing an abstracted reading of the ground plan of the different hotel spaces. The visual result was sculptural yet ethereal, as the viewer gradually discovers the almost invisible, abstracted geometry of architecture which dissolves in traces and rewrites itself as graphemes — part of a strange language residing within the in-between landscape of memory. It is as if architecture rephrases the borders of reality through art so much so by giving birth to a new dematerialised emotive spatiality.

TS: I always consider the space where my work is exhibited and I am using it as a main material. Unfortunately, at this time I was unable to visit the hotel where the show took place. The floor plan of the hotel was the only scientifically reliable way to understand how to experience the space. I created 35 prints and my intention was to state questions about the way that architecture depicts space and how this can be reinterpreted abstractly through visual arts. I ended up with a dismantlement of the space and its geometry as it is imprinted on the floor plan and to its reassembly by printmaking. Because of the embossment the prints had obviously sculptural qualities and yet they were nearly invisible. This derived as a continuity of the work that I had at DESTE where the relief’s visibility was camouflaged by the herring bone pattern of the parquet. The form and details were revealed by the lighting conditions, and by the movement of the viewer. Something similar that I wanted to achieve with the work at ROOMS was the body’s participation and the effort of the spectator in order to read the work.

FT: I have got few questions in relation to the tools you employ in dealing with mass, volume and at the same time emptiness and freeing of space. Would you say that you agree with Martin Heidegger when he objectifies space as the emptiness between objects or do you believe that sculptural truth depends on embodiment? And could it be that scuptural objects are places themselves instead of merely belonging to a place? Or is it that a certain place and the societal rules that come along with it, are the ones who eventually ‘materialise’ sculpture?

TS: All those questions are pursuits of every sculptor, contemporary or older, and I do not really have a concrete answer — maybe this is why I keep trying to develop my work and take it further. These questions keep artists active. Since what I am trying to do is to explore relationships, I will agree partially with Heidegger, but I think that the approach to facts like those in art is different. The artist is not a philosopher neither scientist, as he/she has to consider things that are away from a philosophical or scientific interpretation. Whatever it is, for me sculpture condenses the space and acts like the core of the atom where the biggest part of the atom’s mass is collected. It does not demand another object in order to define space. This condition is made unavoidable by the presence of the viewer but it is not stable. Talking about art under the umbrella of postmodernism we should consider political, societal historical and other aspects. Although sculptures like The Burglers of Calais by Rodin, which I saw again recently, will remind us that important art can exist in any era and without the heavy postmodern texts.

FT: Your work is characterised by a strong sense of control in relation to craft, pattern and applied geometry, as well as by continuity. Is it possible for you to foresee where your work is heading?

TS: As I have mentioned before I have always had a strong mathematical approach to thinking and this helped me a lot to develop a sense of control of my data. In order to achieve that I keep going backwards to my old work even if these are finished works, sketches or models. Every time, I try to look at these as a new viewer and to discover things that I might have ignored. It is mainly through those elements that I move on to new works, with an aim to create a chain without repeating myself as far as this is possible. I keep working on the things that I have developed an interest in over the last few years, but I am always waiting for the next surprise that my work will bring to me. Surprise activates the work of every artist. Without it everything becomes boring and pointless.


Theodoros Stamatogiannis was born in 1977 in Ioannina, Greece.