Chiliart galleryThe art of mosaic, a sophisticated decor for the ancient world, is certainly the oldest in the visual arts. Through the centuries, mosaic art declined and was placed on the pedestal of a minor art, which turned it, in our consciousness, in an industrialised tourist product. Fortunately, in recent decades, many artists, combining the old traditional technique with a modern aesthetic, replaced the technical production with one that inspires them.
One such example is the artist Julia Athanassaki. For about ten years, skipping all the seductive temptations of an easy success, she worked quietly and modestly. Having gone through all possible experiments in an educational level (painting, sculpture, graphic design), she didn’t struggle to find her identity in the art of mosaic. Gifted with an innate sense of form, she follows a procedure with rules dictated by the material itself. She ends up creating works of art which are opposed to the established sense of “good taste” – just as the way she lives her life, being more outside than inside the mundane. “…The purpose of my work is reusing and recycling. The creation of interesting work of art is stimulated by materials, which for others are useless.” she would tell me when we met at her studio on the occasion of the exhibition she is preparing for Chili Art Gallery on February 4, 2011.
In this solo exhibition, she will present small furniture on which she has intervened, as none of them are new, being everyday objects and wall compositions. Her artistic mastery and the feeling of the creator through the morphological simplicity, revive an entire unrecognized and forgotten world. The fundamental element of her art is picture and, through the expression of her art, she provides a new meaning to the picture itself.
The exhibition of Julia Athanassaki will be on display until and including Saturday 5th May 2011.
curated by Jenny Tsoumpri[/one_half]
