2011 MARIA KENANIDOU

"Illusory cubes"

Maria Kompatsiari invades into outdoor, public space, breaking the confines of her two-dimensional, illusory painting.

She does so with the same eloquence, using the main structural components of her visual language: dynamic juxtapositions between the linearity of her drawing and the explosive intensity of color, breads, inversions, traces, scriptures, spreads of rhythm and form, cymose and sinuous arrangements, that she unravels through the illusionary handling of the canvas’ surface.

She masterfully transposes this illusory manipulation of space and time into the three dimensions and she invites the spectator to multiple readings.
The cube and its spreads, constructed so that one encloses the other, become symbols – vehicles of spatial perception and experience, incorporating the concepts of removal and travel, bearing the charged symbolism of some random flight, escape or daydream. Through the use of the outer wooden construction/shell, the cube’s basic structure encompasses the boxed paintings within the enclosed shape of a sui generis miniature of an imaginary gallery. It encloses an ironic comment on multiplicity, space, dream, boundary, distance, intimacy, rupture, density, void, silence, stillness, explosion… ultimately on the anesthetized image of space, the point where the conscious meets the vague.

Maria Kenanidou
art historian-curator
2/8/2011