ATHENS OPEN ART 2 4 T H
S E P T E M B E R
GALLERY
SNEHTA
NODNOL EXHIBITIONS
INDEX
1. NAE ZERKA 2. DESPOINA MARIA LOGIDOU 3. MILENA DIMITROKALLIS 4. IOANNA PAPANIKOLAOU 5. ANASTASIA VOUTSA 6. PIGI DAOULA 7. LAMPRINI COSTICA 8. ALEXANDRA AQUILINA 9. SHOHREH ABDOLRAHIMI 10. ISIDORA PAPADOULI 11. SOPHIA ZVARA
NAE ZERKA IG: @nae.zerka
In the age of frequent digital disruption, award winning visual artist Nae Zerka’s works showcase the promising possibilities of painting with technology. As a child of the 80s, Zerka has a penchant for computer related activities, including electronic music and graphic design. His artistic practice infuses visual elements borrowed from these disciplines with a painterly touch. Together with the use of contrasting colours and line work, they form new kaleidoscopic worlds made possible by the digital realm. He was recently nominated as 'Artist to Watch 2021' from art connect and also included in the 'Top Contemorary Artist Gold List 2021' of Art Market Magazin. Selected works are shown in September 2021 @ CICA museum in South Korea.
DESPOINA MARIA LOGIDOU IG: @despoinalogidou
Despoina Maria Logidou is a young Greek artist who was born in Athens-Greece in 1982 and she has roots, apart from Greece, from Cyprus and Ethiopia. She studied "Graphic Design" at Middlesex University, "Theology Studies" at the Theological School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and "Early Childhood Studies" at University of East London. She has worked with kids of preschool age, aiming to their emotional and social development, through pedagogical activities, crafts and painting techniques. In her paintings she is inspired from subjects like praying, the sentiments of man between himself and the divine, the balance of human psyche and the inaccessible path someone has to go through in order to approach his real self. In this way, her artwork is born, through which her internal state flows while battling between real and abstract, something that shows through the color relations that are almost never truly distinct. At spring of 2017 she is holding her first solo exhibition at Coronari111 gallery in Rome. This exhibition has opened the path for her later course, making her works travel all the way down to faraway Australia.
MILENA DIMITROKALLIS IG: @milenadimitrokallis Born in Athens, in 1971, she studied Business and Management in London and completed a two-year programme in Drawing and Painting in Athens. Since 2011, she has been systematically engaged in painting, having presented her work in 10 solo and over 80 group exhibitions and art projects, in art galleries, museums and contemporary art fairs in Greece and abroad, such as Athens, Thessaloniki, Mykonos, Paros, Santorini, New York, Paris, Rome, Copenhagen, Barcelona. In 2013, she was awarded first prize at the Mitteleuropa Prix International Art Competition by the Ufofabrik Contemporary Art Gallery in Italy. Her artworks are part of private collections in Greece and abroad and have been exhibited at the OTE Group Telecommunications Museum and the Copelouzos Art Museum in Athens as well as the Carris Museum in Lisbon. She lives and works in Athens.
IOANNA PAPANIKOLAOU IG: @ioannapapanikolaou
Ioanna Papanikolaou is a self-taught abstract artist. She started painting professionally in 2018. Ioanna’s medium of choice is acrylics. She draws under clear lines, clear fonts of true colors. Using Gold and Glitter wants to reproduce the effect of light! Finding herself to draw, inspired by the pure elegance of the decades of 60’s&70’scombined with the Greek spirit and with the elegant modern lifestyle, her memories and her way of thinking. Her personal opinion is that the meaning of art is love and that “Beauty, kindness and authenticity will save the world”.
ANASTASIA VOUTSA IG: @caactuscare I was born and raised in Germany as the daughter of Greek immigrants and studied Education Sciences at the University of Ludwigsburg. After traveling in Asia and Australia, I decided to leave Germany and find a less organized place to develop my creativity and imagination. I realized that when everything around us is flawless, it becomes more difficult to find inspiration. In 2019 I finally moved to Heraklion (Crete) and discovered a whole new world, accompanied by the daily consumption of water in plastic bottles and coffee in paper cups. That got me thinking. So I started upcycling ingle-use products and creating all kinds of things for the first time. I later decided to share my ideas on Instagram and link them to my own blog for instructions. Now I organize workshops for children and teach them how to turn recyclable materials into toys, games and other beautiful things.
PIGI DAOULA IG: @pigi_daoula My inspiration comes from everything around and inside me! I use all kinds of tools and bright colors! The idea is inside me but my painting guides me to my final result! I live in Greece,a country full of sun and colors so my inspiration thrives! I am new in the field of abstract painting but I have already taken part in several exhibitions in Athens and abroad! Pigi Daoula was born in 1974, in Athens, Greece! Having left behind her studies in marketing and advertising, Pigi Daoula is one of the main representatives of pouring and dripping techniques in Greece. Far from norms and conventional techniques, she found the ultimate expression in these techniques that give her works movement and energy. It is no coincidence that the starting point for her artistic pursuit was when she was at MOMA in New York in front of Jackson Pollock's painting "One: number 31, 1950". Since then, Pigi Daoula has been dedicated to action painting. "The project already exists," she says characteristically. The artist is asked to capture it on the canvas. The way to do this has a person-centered approach. What matters is that the project is released
LAMPRINI COSTICA IG: @costica_lamprini Lamprini Costica was born in 1983 by Greek parents at the city of Thessaloniki, Greece, where she currently lives and works. Studies 2014, BA (Hons) Fine Art at Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece . Has important solo and group exhibitions in her CV. The Amour Tropical series is inspired by the area of the subconscious. This is a source of information, images, fantasies.
ALEXANDRA AQUILINA IG: @screengirl_artprints "Cheesecake from the Heavens" is a fun reinterpretation of the Holy Vulva-shaped Snack the pastizz. The imagery of the vulva/pastizz is elevated to the glorious holiness ascribed to it by the Maltese. It is a playful take on this idea. Behind the cute imagery and bright colours however, lurks the infinite blackness and the idea that although we are quick to elevate something so female shaped to divinity, society is equally swift in dragging that same thing (and the womanhood) into the deepest pits.
SHOHREH ABDOLRAHIMI IG: @shohrehabdolrahimi Dr. Shohreh Abdolrahimi is a self-taught artist with a passion for art throughout her life. Her paintings start from a dream image formed in the state of hypnagogic or hypnopompic at a subconscious level. However, her creative process is completely unplanned and when she seats in front of the canvas, she reads the life of the canvas and the painting always takes the life of its own and develops as she pours her heart into the painting and immerses into it more like a ritual. The resulting painting usually carries the same emotion experienced at the dream image, though it is a different image moving along the border between abstract and expressionism. "Pink day" was created when Shohreh was experiencing the loss of a grandmother. Pink day expresses death as the ultimate moment of our connection to the vastness of the universe, and the connection she still feels with the lost loved ones.
ISIDORA PAPADOULI IG: @consumethehumans Isidora was born in Athens, Greece. She graduated from the School of Visual and Applied Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, with a major in Printmaking under the tutelage of Professor Manolis Yiannadakis in 2013. She was awarded the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Scholarship and completed her MA Visual Arts: Printmaking at UAL, Camberwell College of Arts in 2016. In 2019 and while living in London, she developed the project ‘consume the humans’, examining aspects of one’s identity and exploring new artistic means by combining in her work a documentary approach with abstract visual aesthetics. These series work was made during London’s first lockdown in 2020. The work explores the “new” sensation of experiencing space and time introduced by the isolation of the lockdown rules.
SOPHIA ZVARA IG: @zvara_art Through painting I try to capture everyday tensions and at the same time to express emotions, isolated in their raw form. Painting has become a necessity and at the same time a way to transfigure the different phases of my life, often emphasizing the difficult and darkest ones. In my paintings I choose abstract expressionism in order to vividly illustrate through the amorphous shapes and the manifestations of the colors the very process of creating the painting and the emotional influences that it produces, while it produces them. Every viewer sees something different in my paintings and I hope that this way they can relate and find a part of themselves. In a society of alienation, art remains the most genuine way of communication.
ATHENS OPEN ART 24th September