In this series, Maria Fragoudaki utilizes materials such as feathers, rubber, and string to create three-dimensional, sculptural pieces. Her focus shifts from paint to material itself, how it interacts with the surface and with other materials. She explores contrast, difference, and the transformation of materials, making them interact in ways that alter their original properties.
For example, in many of these works, she juxtaposes feathers soft, delicate material—with rubber, its complete opposite. By carefully selecting colors and working with mixed media and pigments, she modifies the texture of the feathers, making them resemble rubber. The feathers, once soft, become hardened, rough, even painful to the touch. Similarly, the rubber bicycle tire that forms the circle is covered in feathers, stripping it of its original properties.
With this series, she begins working in duets—two paintings at the same time—observing the marks that one painting leaves on the other.
I started creating these circular pieces as for almost a year I kept having a very intense image on my mind. The image of being in a forest surrounded by trees.
“It’s dark.
I stand in the middle of the forest looking up in the sky.
The trees form a circle around me and all I can see is the light from the moon in the sky.”
I was waking up with this image trying to figure out what it meant for me. I wrote a small narrative/poem and named all the circular pieces I created “Untitled”. I wanted them individually to have no title and only when put together in a room and with the poem projected on the wall to all make sense.