Eleanna Martinou is presenting the exhibition “RADAR” at Batagianni Gallery.
Martinou's painting depicts the condition of habitat in our time, one of infinite urban landscape, informal construction, nomadism and pointless drift. Dense layers of color that contain vertiginal fragmented images of the Contemporary Metropolis, violent gestures on the canvas and a narrativity reminiscent of science fiction constitute the artistic place and manner. It is an attempt of Mapping Chaos, a Radar recording turbulent and delirious sensations.
The opening is on Wednesday February 1st and the exhibition runs through to Saturday March 3rd 2012, at Batagianni Gallery (Iraklitou 3, Kolonaki, Athens.
Invented Ice City | We will always have Paris
We asked Eleanna to talk to us about “Invented Cities”, her work and the way she approaches and perceives art in general.
“I am interested in the boundless construction of the planet, a mesh of routes, a different aspect of the face, personal choices of different directions towards a destination the end of which is unknown, and so is its beginning. I attempt an artistic mapping of chaos.
“Invented Cities” is about the random wandering through urban chaos, through the crossing routes, such as the roads depicted on a map.
I feel that the network of a city is important – its energy, its itineraries, its streets, but also the network based on its groups of people.
I work in consecutive layers, crashing the original image, layering various characters that form a community. By mixing and repositioning these characters I create a body, a new network-state, in which lie buried and broken characters waiting to be discovered, the way it happens in ruins.
I am dealing with the space within the space, and the city makes for a representative example of such a chaotic mesh. Overall, I’d say that the mesh intrigues me.
I am not interested in the utilitarian representation of an image but in the creation of it, further from what a person has to go through on a daily basis, an image that changes, that forces reality, at time accelerating it and at times rendering it slower.
I’d say that technology aids painting. The difference between creating something with my hands and technology is that according to the second the body is not participating so much in the process of creation. Technology aids but we are defined by our bodies.
To say that art has reached the capacity of its so far known form is different to saying that it has reached a dead end. Obviously the need of the expression form has changed. The boundaries between arts are open, we cannot define them.
There is a need for a network of people to get together and exercise in exchange and collaboration.”
- Eleanna Martinou
Eleanna Martinou was born in 1981. She studied at ASFA (2000-2006) and completed the MFA program in 2009. She has participated in 48 group exhibitions both in Greece and abroad and has worked for theatre sets and publication illustration. Find out more about the artist HERE.