Vasilopoulou, Vivi.
“DNA of affection.” Ependytis (Works & Ideas), 24-25 November 2001, p. 14.
From the predated “Threat” in the exhibition of `91 and “Odysseus’ of `92 in the Medusa Gallery, to today`s “Adventure of a trace” in the same gallery “there`s many a slip`s twixt cup and lip”, as they say. And indeed, a lot has happened since.
An insignificant event produces a rupture in the tunnel that travels inside us. And we are called to recognize, with one act what we saw: a Threat. “A threat of common acceptance”. Like verses signed in common, at the time and later. “The threat of protection, of abundance and of ignorance, of ignorance and deficiency, of deficiency and knowledge, the unpardonable touch of knowledge and abundance”.
And the “illustration” of the Threat is clear, meaningful, powerful, concise in meaning, drawing, colour, a soul and matter painter.
And then “To Odysseus”, “Journeys, unknown entrails” enclosed in boats. Time of a deep red colour. Time moist – Phaedon, Pandora, Aegaeas, Danae, Prometheus.
The memory is collective, the recording individual, the choice and the formulation dynamic, personal, of a particular character. This character reveals in this presentation another side, an immaterial one, ethereal, imaginary emblematic and symbolic, that isolates, projects and repeats trace elements from the previous work in a search for the diagnosis of the artistic DNA.
Barbara Mavrakaki goes to the bottom of things with infinite tenderness and draws up characteristic samples of her self-portrait, somewhere between West and East.
This exhibition is not retrospective; on the contrary, it is just an introduction to the work to come. While now, with works of space, triptychs and views, it is expecting us in Medusa Gallery on Xenocratous Street, until the 12 of January.
Schina, Athina.
“Varvara Mavrakaki: Medusa Gallery.” Lexi, November-December, 2001, no. 166, p. 733.
In every exhibition of Barbara Mavrakaki, one is witnessing a great leap related to the evolution of her work, without losing the sense of continuity and coherence with previous stages and concepts of her art. In this recent presentation of her new work, which includes wall surfaces and “space installations” with mixed material, the artist has developed the technique of transparency through superposed layers of her writing which is basically figutative. The excerpts from prints, traces that memory leaves behind, time, human gestures, animals crossing a field (from the itineraries that their footprints indicate), the consequence on soft ground of a wind blowing, or the cycles of wave on the surface of water, all these elements inscribe on the optical field actions and activities of trajectories and rhythmical themes. The time and space of the image and of the imagination interweave with real time and space, when the eye wanders endlessly, but also when the body of the traveler moves within the “installation”.
With tapes that remind one of tongues of a silk worm sequence that varies in relation to its topographical microunits, by projecting the punctuation of the logos of the image that has been refuted or transubstantiated, as well as the organic marks of a movement-space geography that forms the map of the image`s itineraries, on a vertical and horizontal level, Barbara Mavrakaki connects the past with the present, the intention with the result, the momentary event with a duration beyond time, the live imprint with the transcendental fossil.
Without cerebral structures, on the one hand, on the other without being pinned down on the style language of the material, the painter manages to control her lyricism and combines it with a Doric frugality, revealing in this way an inner throbbing microcosm, which contains in its coincident logy rules and oddities which concern what is hazardous, unforeseen and possible, a kind of confirmation of an invisible rule. It is a rule that focuses on the roots of formalization and unites phenomenology with ontology, subjectivity with objectivization, on the structure of these works that are identical, alternating with flexibility their “hieroglyphic” reading with various levels of layers, as well as with each separate surface. The sensitivity and sensibility of their material treatment reveal the poetics of the works, which function like composes or street signs, indicating a more profound truth hiding in the shadows of things.
[No title available]. In Barbara Mavrakaki. Athens: Μedusa, 2001. (Text in greek and english).
I train
the body
to get used
to times
to the lack
of need
Space informal
subsisting
you knock
from within
solid matter
recedes
and you open up
to the whole
Time
given
time
of rhythm
end of
world
order
Slowly
very slowly
I proceed
to the new
to the ancient
to the further
future
Fragments
sway
free
self-sufficient
a recognition
of places
allows
my
participation
And what will happen
with the whole?
you observe
with all due respect
and chose
whatever you can
each time
Let`say
the black
of the soil
the pitch
black
the sacred
black
They resemble
traces of birds
gusts
of wind
Visitors
have started
they invade
the space
written
burnt
οn calico
they drip
clean
water.
Sparkling clean
I am
only
the introduction
for the
work
which
minute
but real
awaits me