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Text for the solo exhibition Fields in Artshot Sophia Gaitani by the art historian  Louisa Karapidakis. November 2022, Athens.

Places unknown yet familiar. Soundless landscapes emerging out of a cold silence.  This is what Maria Flippakopoulos most recent set of pictures consists of (Fields, 2020-2022).

Her loci are landscapes of both memory and fantasy. Their identities and even their very names are not those of actual places, even though they might allude to them through their photorealistic qualities. Most commonly, they stem from places she has experience of, such as Elis, Arcadia, and various islands (from the Aegean, the Ionian and the Libyan Seas). She deals not only with sea and beach but also with briars; with both fertile plains and arid plots. Urban spaces are also very much in evidence; these are constructed from memory and carried to canvas as personal, idealised depictions. Human artifacts are very much in evidence, but actual human presence is not. There are aspects of buildings that have been put together eclectically, in the most individual of ways.

Her representations contain colours present in nature, especially those basking in light: cold blues, warm greens, flashing yellows, together with the more neutral tones of sand. These serve to bring out the eclecticism of her imagery, while bestowing a transcendent dimension to her compositions. In her own words: “I employ old-fashioned materials in my paintings, namely oil on canvas, in order to compose what, I hope, are contemporary images. Oil is a material which takes time to dry; it is alive and unsettled for days, and this allows me to intervene again and again. I avoid thick colours or pastes, but I do employ layering of colour. Layers are added until the colour attains the qualities I demand of it. Spreading colour over the canvas repeatedly is, for me, a meditative process”.

After the first feelings of surprise, the visitor is led by an ingenious combination of colour and topic to track the relation between the natural and the depicted sign. Again, in her own words: “My aim is for the viewer to be able to fashion his or her own narratives, to discover his or her own personal memory”.

There is an austerity in her visual modes of expression, but this is tempered by the unpretentious beauty of the places. Her unadorned lines accord with the rules of perspective and the natural proportions of volume. This only serves to transform the representations of Maria Flippakopoulos into poetical imagery, dispensing with photographic naturalism.

The formulations of her vision are highly personal and dislocated from time: “I aim to create images that are open to interpretation as regards time, space and the notions that accompany them”. Her Fields exude a unique kind of lyricism and contain vivid narratives. Thus, they encapsulate her ongoing striving for a visual simplicity that is stylised, post-modern yet also representational

Louiza Karapidakis, art historian

AXIANEWS

Article in Axianews for the group show Contemporary Greek Painters at Artshot_Sophia Gaitani in June 2022.

Article in Axianews for the 3 artists show Precious Entities at Artshot_Sophia Gaitani in May 2022.

@elsewheresound · Record label

@elsewheresound · Record label

Text for the solo exhibition Long Days in Kourd Gallery, Athens, 2019 by the art historian  and Benaki Museum curator Konstantinos Papachristou

Maria Filippakopoulou has established her own personal and highly recognizable style. With each new work, her painting evolves and new elements are introduced, which lend themselves to more and more profound explanations. Wandering around Athens, she uses her camera to take down anything that might seize her attention, with her particular focus being the continuum between the urban and the natural environment. Her paintings trace their origins to these photographs. She manages to circumvent the peril of succumbing to a shallow photographic realism by imprinting a deeper emotional tension on her works. They are something much more than mere pretty pictures.

Even a casual glance at the works in this exhibition will suffice to convince the viewer of Mrs Filippakopoulou’s ability to tell a story. She does so in a very economic manner, her stories being concise and not at all tiresome. She manages to avoid giving only one instant of the story, as she does not freeze time. Nor does she merely bind her story within a beginning and an end. Rather, she lays the basics of the plot and allows the viewer to complete it. She weaves in all eleven stories of urban everyday life, which can be taken one at a time but also as a whole.

The transition from the depiction of particular moments to telling a story is a major accomplishment for Mrs Filippakopoulou. The point of departure for her is the haiku form, which employs a mere seventeen syllables to depict an image from nature. The haiku is of course a challenge, both for the creator, who is constrained by the tight form of the poem, but also for the reader, who has to decode it. The seventeen syllables correspond to the paintings, with the austerity of form allowing imagination and the emotions to soar, and with image being transformed into narrative.

Urban landscape is a difficult subject matter for any artist. We are so familiar with it that we often subconsciously judge on the verisimilitude of depiction or the familiarity of locations and spaces. The artist manages to avoid these pitfalls, despite her cheeky mentions to specific urban locales in the titles of her works. In fact, she proceeds to introduce lines and motives from the realm of the imagination, in a successful attempt to bridge the real world with the imaginary one, while retaining the simplicity and elegance of her original concept.

What makes Maria Filippakopoulou’s “Long Days” stand out is not so much their length per se, but rather what takes place during and inside them. There are aimless wanderings and unexpected meetings, with all their attendant emotions. The relation between space and time is always a major theme in her work, only it is now endowed with a broader emotional and philosophical significance, which has been brought about not so much by the finished product but rather by the process of creation.

Translation: Sotiris Leventis

Text for the solo exhibition Still Time in Kourd Gallery, Athens, 2016 by the art historian  and Benaki Museum curator Konstantinos Papachristou

Maria Filippakopoulous’ latest work is very much part of a continuum from her previous work. There is greater maturity here, whether in the lesser extent of human presences, the milder gradations of colour, or the employment of a more selective range of colours, with all of them serving to bring out her own, highly distinctive style.

Still Time, the title of the exhibition, seems to hearken to Still Life, as in the depiction of inanimate subjects. While Filippakopoulou does not do traditional still lifes, her works do depict instances of frozen time and perfect motionlessness. Her experience in drama and photography aid her in setting up a series of broad snapshots, which address both emotion and memory.

Space for Maria Filippakopoulou is about more than the representation of landscape. For her, space does not only enhance viewing pleasure, but also serves to awaken emotion. In her most recent works, while there is a vague touch of sadness, the viewer is free to feel both familiar and new sentiments, depending on his or her own feelings. While space addresses emotion, time aims to activate memory. As with space, a frozen image of real time awakens comparable moments for the viewer, while provoking questions about what happened before and what will come after.

There are a number of allusions to major artists, such as David Hockney (with the swimming pools, which hint at his trademark works of the 1960s), or Edward Hopper (the dramatic layout). Yet these are no mere repetitive themes, but rather the outpouring of the artist’s memory, engaging the memories of the viewer. It is this communication between artist and viewer, by means of the image and with the end product of the awakening of memory and emotion that determines these paintings.