The work Untitled #06 l/g by the Cypriot artist Haris Epaminonda seems to be most suitable for an energy trading company: thundering waters plunging into the depths, with the following text line appearing on the right-hand side of the waterfall triptych: “on the next page: unused energy.”

Haris Epaminonda runs into the source material for her works. This holds true for her videos, photographs, and objects, yet above all for her works on paper, for which the artist rearranges individual pages from second-hand books, preferably from the 1950s and 1960s. They are set pieces from distant times and countries transferred into a present context in the form of new combinations. The layout, language, and colors and primarily the tactile quality of the paper give testimony to history, while these rarities are refreshed through the artist’s intervention and open up a window to the past. It is not the individual page that matters, but the combination of all of the elements involved. Three-dimensional objects emerge from the pages of a book, the medium of two-dimensionality per se. The frames, conceived by the artist in careful deliberation, contribute to this transformation process and raise the question of these treasures’ conscious institutionalization: after all, many of the artist’s exhibits evoke a miniature world of museums.

The one-woman show VOL. I, II & III, presented at the Malmö Konsthall in 2009, clearly illustrated Epaminonda’s principles. Her works were displayed on pedestals and in showcases reminiscent of a traditional museum environment, so that the impression of typological and ethnological tours was conveyed. The vases, vessels, and small sculptures presented in the room entered into a dialogue with the framed book pages on the walls. The beholders were encouraged to join in and undertake a journey in time with the found footage material.

The work owned by the evn collection invites the spectator to visit the Victoria Falls. The “unused energy” notice in the triptych’s right part is juxtaposed with the “Devil’s Cataract” on the left; the central image has no text. Haris Epaminonda’s works are a challenge to perception; the motifs confront us with the cultural and political problems at their times of origin. Yet simultaneously, they are also artifacts of the immediate present playing with various dimensions (one of which is time). The Zambezi’s gigantic water masses form a contrast to the fragile charm of this tripartite arrangement.

Heike Maier-Rieper, 2011 (translation: Wolfgang Astelbauer)