Athina Katsampa

A series of photographs which capture moments and hidden viewpoints of sequential operations in various industrial production lines; the aim of every production line is to create end-products ready for mass consumption. The exhibition is the result of years of research and purposeful wondering aiming to capture the rhythm and dynamics through which raw materials are transformed within Greek industrial sites into everyday consumer products. Predominant attention is placed on materials, mechanical movements as well as research and scientific preliminary work, elements that lose their distinctive identity within the wider context of industrial production and that are reviewed and redefined by the photographer’s aesthetical criteria. Katsampa records images from industrial sites that produce ready for consumption mass products like icecream, clothes and pharmaceutical products, as well as industrial raw materials like colours, threads and metals. The photographical compositions created and presented by the artist exhibit industrial materials of wider use and consumption in highly unusual moments and forms, rendering them unrecognisable to the unfamiliar spectator. The use of perspective, sharp focus as well as the consideration of three-dimensional details, colours and speed presented by the photographer enlighten the image captured in each photograph attributing to it a set of new characteristics and meaning. Within the context of contemporary Greece’s developments, where consumerism is deflating and at the same time industrial production and growth are presented as the salvation routes leading to the country’s prosperous future, through her work Athina Katsampa urges her spectators to reconsider and determine their power and importance. By presenting unexpected moments of industrial production and creation of everyday products and materials, the artists anticipates the optical and cultural enlightenment of the Greek industry focusing on the relationships between machines, people, raw materials and massively  consumed products.

Eirini Marouli