Vasilopoulou, Vivi.
“Τerakotas, drawings and all kinds of plans.”
Ependytis (Works & Ideas), 9 December 1995.
Dedications
“Looking at them from the outside they seem to me like a form of writing. Hoping to utter a word, I insist on the exercise”, writes Barbara Mavrakaki in the forword of the catalogue of her exhibition in Medusa Gallery, describing in an epigrammatic and very concise way her work, from the distance of a spectator, the relation of the artist and the reserve of the scientist who does not hesitate to cohabitate with doubt, “the cohabitant years” and their memories.
And it is precisely these exercises that cultivate the growth and strengthening of the dynamic relations between matter and spirit, while simultaneously they lead to a, by now, very recognizable work, identical to grand gestures, sure for its formulations and its precise colours, “sound foundation for an intro-aesthetic procedure”.
Parallely, the metaphysical character is stressed more here and is also supported by thematic choices, as “non reversible”, “transient”, “in heaven”, “to those who are not with us any more” and “from the other side”, “drawings and plans repealed by colour”, which, none-the-less exist, like a strong structural web or like the ancient concurrence between colour and drawing.
As for the whole of this work that struggles to ensure the consent of metaphysics and the overpassing of every pusillanimous convention, we have the words of Adorno describing the music of Schönberg: “It has lifted up and bears all the darkness and guilt of the world on its shoulders. All its happiness consists in recognizing its unhappiness, all its beauty consists in refusing itself all apparent beauty”.
[No title available]. In Barbara Mavrakaki: Cohabiting Times.
Athens: Μedusa, 1995. (Text in greek and english).
Glancing at them, they seem a writing form
In the hope of uttering word
I persist on exercise.