Theodore Psychoyos: Working With Matter

“The pieces I use are often accidents or became redundant at some point in industrial production.”To create his objects, the sculptor exclusively works with found stones, which he retrieves from factories and old quarries. “Marble has been widely used in Greece for thousands of years. People have been working with it a lot, and you can find it everywhere. The pieces I use are often accidents or became redundant at some point in industrial production.” In his practice, Psychoyos frequently employs the ends of marble slabs, sliced at irregular angles, remnants from cut-outs, or fragments of broken blocks, all of which bear unique marks of imperfections. “I barely modify the pieces after I bring them to my studio. I like the traces of humans, machines, and the natural marks on the rocks. The essence of my work lies in observing those elements and balancing them in a way that makes sense.” Suddenly, a smooth, machine-cut marble piece forms a bench when paired with a rough, unpolished rock. Once discarded, cylindrical stones function as components of tables, and rounded marble blocks are combined with a hand-hammered stone and translated into a chair.

The combination of these contrasting qualities results in a raw and rebellious aesthetic—an aspect that doesn’t overly concern the artist, however. What intrigues him is how the objects make us move within a space. “I like that my works are quite heavy and that their position cannot be easily changed. Through that, they challenge us to navigate differently around them and break a certain pattern,” he shares. “What interests me is our ability as humans to adapt to spaces and the objects within them. It is like imagining being on a field with one tree. You would go under this tree to seek shade rather than planting a new one somewhere where you think it might fit better and then wait another twenty years for it to grow … That is also how I like to look at my objects.”