DESPOINA FLESSA AT FRONTVIEWS AT HAUNT, BERLIN

Despoina Flessa (Fellow 2018) takes part in the exhibition “Frontviews” along with Thorsten A. Kasper and Stelios Karamanolis

An archaeological field has opened up on the ground. Bone fragments form the skeleton of an unknown creature. On the other hand, the elements remind us of stylized floral forms as they can be found in several variations in heraldic figures since the Middle Ages. They could also be natural casts that have made it from a past time to the present.
In fact, the supposed findings are modelled on a Paleolithic fossil found in the Peloponnese, a Greek peninsula in the south of the mainland. The artist Despina Flessa (*1986, Athens) did not take the segments of her sculpture Liquid Bones (2019) from the original, but reconstructed them from unfired clay and covered them with several layers of graphite. The result is this pure, smooth surface, which resembles a metal casting.
Graphite is the central component of Flessa’s artistic approach, which usually oscillates between drawing, collage and sculpture. In Fold (2020) the mineral also determines the perception of the work. Like a very thin and at the same time massive steel plate, which is bent towards the middle at the upper two corners and rolled up at the lower side, Fold hangs, defying its apparent weight, almost floating on the wall. The fact that it is a work of paper remains completely hidden from the viewers. The metallic, dark-silver surface, which is the result of a multiple coating of graphite, obscures the paper ground and thus visually transforms the used material into another. This is exactly what Despina Flessa is interested in: she apparently tests and transcends material boundaries by working entirely with the properties of the same.
Besides the materiality of the materials, figurative elements can also become actors. In The Field (2017), Flessa shows how the depicted in the pictorial space is transferred to the outside through the shape of the material, thus creating a holistic illusion. At first glance, the vertically three-part work appears to be birch bark. At second glance, the upper third even reveals the shape of numerous trees, which seem to merge into one another as if bathed in clouds of fog. Below the forest that is depicted, there follow arbitrarily arranged, hatched surfaces that, taken as a whole, produce the same structure as is found on birch trees. The three stripes each finish in monochrome dark grey ends, which curl up at the corners as if the bark had detached from the tree at this point, thus completing the illusion and the interplay of motif and technique (monotype and graphite on paper).
The oeuvre of the artist is diverse. Repeatedly, Despina Flessa combines monochrome surfaces, figurations, graphic gestures and the material which operates with the space, thus creating a new understanding of material entities which the viewer can experience individually.

Text by Isabel Steglich

Information

frontviews at HAUNT
Kluckstraße 23
10785 Berlin

Opening Thu 1 and Fri 2 Oct 2 – 9 pm
1 – 31 Oct 2020

regular opening hours
Wed – Sat 2 – 7 pm and by appointment