Cryptographic Idylls by Oresteia Papachristou

On Friday, February 8th opens at Art Gallery "ASTROLAVOS-Tank" Oresteia Papachristou’s first solo exhibition entitled “Cryptographic Idylls”.

Cryptographies are the cueing way of bearing mystical information.The artist chose the specific title for her exhibition, as the dominant element of her works is the symbolic information contained therein. Influenced by Renaissance and Baroque philosophy, of Occultism and Symbolism she uses in her works symbolic elements of the iconography of the Renaissance and the Arts of the East.

Cryptographic Idylls, Oresteia Papachristou, 100 X 150 cm

The subject of her work consists of configurations depicting female figures, sometimes singly, other times in clusters of two or more forms, where the erotic element – ambience dominates. The forms are simply attributed, emphasizing on the simple dark contour and the almost monochromatic rendering of the body,standing out for the flowing, sometimes curvilinear postures of the bodies, creating the impression of a continuous flowing motion, as well as the gestures of the proportionately oversized limbs that attach strongly, emphatically the symbolism of her paintings.

Cryptographic Idylls, Oresteia Papachristou, 100 X 150 cm

The eroticism, diffusing through the subject of her paintings, as well as an underlying, intimate violence, is sometimes described through the symbols and shapes, and others through the gestures of the mainly female forms that are starring in her works, is a seamlessly element of life.

Cryptographic Idylls, Diptyque, Oresteia Papachristou, 220 X 220 cm

Her technique -encaustic- which is used on the wooden underpinnings of her works, as well as the color regulations of hagiography, played a catalyzing role in the stylistic genre that the artist has developed in her work.

The color range that she uses separates the hue and brightness, as is permitted and created by the wax as a raw material, apart from its symbolic substance is a touch counter to the gray scale that surrounds our lives nowadays, and we need it more than anything else. The colors crush any fear of love.

Born and raised in Athens, in the years when information overload is both a necessity and a merit, the artist borrows and mutates in her painting, elements of the Art of the West, Pop - Art, Graffiti, psychedelic posters and Comics and turns to the East taking its rich,limitless aesthetic, creating atmospheric allusively paintings, which seem to connect the old with the new, the tradition with contemporary art.

Exhibition’s duration: from Friday, February 8th until Saturday, March 8th, 2013.

Place: "ASTROLAVOS-Tank" 11th Xanthippou Street, Kolonaki, Athens. tel: 2107294342 - 3, Fax: 2107293317, www.astrolavos.gr, gallery@astrolavos.gr

Opening hours: Tuesday - Friday: 10.30 - 15.00 & 18.00 - 21.00 Saturday: 10.30 - 15.00