About Eleanna Martinou

BIO - ARTIST'S TEXT - CURATORIAL


Eleanna Martinou was born in Athens (1981). Studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts (2006) and graduated with a MA in the Arts (2009). She is a studied musician (Athens Conservatoire 1987-2003). Her works are presented in solo and group exhibitions, art fairs and festivals in Greece and abroad. She is a Phd researcher, Athens School of Fine Arts (2018-).

"There are no borders, no countries, only the perpetual movement of populations and networks of people."


Artist Statement

The whole work is based on the Maze in Nature (Rhythmology), the Network of people and the personal need for Freedom and constant movement of Boundaries, through a continuous Flow.

2007-2015: Study of The Matrix and Prisons of Piranesi. Dystopia is presented with paintings and three-dimensional constructions. Aircraft Flights and traces of architectural structures are connected to the Network by constructing Space.

2015-2017: The Network consists of lines that form large or microscopic Portraits(polyptych // grid).

2017-2021: Works of Urban Wandering, where fragments of a human figure without Gravity appear.

Works, either paintings or digital prints of Polyptychs (consisted of paintings or photographs, digitally processed) from urban life in the Metropolis. There are no borders, no countries, only the perpetual movement of populations and networks of people.

The organisation of Chaos as a Form. Everything is connected rhythmically in one Flow. Silence and Sound, in harmony with each other, have an important part of everyday life.

Bio

Solo exhibitions: 2022 URBAN IMPRESSIONS, Tsichrintzis Visual Arts Foundation, Kifissia, Athens | 2021 IMAGINARY METROPOLISES, Mosaic, Culture & Creativity & Cube Gallery, Patras | 2021 URBAN IMPRESSIONS, Cube Gallery, Patras | 2019 HYADES, National Observatory of Athens | 2016 EYEWITNESSES, Eleftheria Tseliou gallery, Athens | 2015 JUNCTION / DISJUNCTION, Akto college, org. Eleftheria Tseliou gallery, Athens | 2014 FACESCAPES, Greek language school Lexi-Logos, Athens | 2013 12+1 PERSONALITIES, Gavrielede's publications, Athens | 2012 RADAR, Batagianni gallery, Athens |2010 FUTURE CITIES FUTURE, Apotheke gallery, Nicosia | 2009 FROM PIRANESI TO MATRIX, Kessanlis Laboratory, Athens School of Fine Arts MFA graduates, 2009, Athens

Lectures | Presentations: 2021 Artistic research as PHD practice, Creator Doctus program, Nida Art Colony, Lithuania | 2020: 9.12.2020 "The Birds.  2020 Chryssa, Antonakos, Samaras." BLOD Bodossaki Lectures On Demand | 2.6.2020 "Chryssa, Antonakos, Samaras: Presentation of works, based on Birds and Flights.", Creator Doctus program, Athens School of Fine Arts | 2019: 9.12.2019 "Chryssa, Antonakos, Samaras: Connections with ancient Greece and Byzantium", Η΄painting studio, Athens School of Fine Arts | 2017: 18.3.2017 Stavros Niarhos Foundation, "Searching for the Minotaur" | 2015: 21.1.2015 "Human Figure" Ε΄painting studio, Athens School of Fine Arts | 2013: 9.4.2013 Personal Works presentation, T.Koumbis studio, Athens School of Fine Arts, MFA program| 2015: 7.2.2015 "Νetwork in everyday life", AKTO college, fine arts studio| 2015: 15.1.2015 Personal Works presentation, AKTO college, fine arts studio

Workshops: 2021 Nida Art Colony, Creator Doctus, Nida Art Colony, Lithuania | 2018 Iron printing in Blue-A Cyanotype Workshop, Berlin Summer University of the Arts. Instructor: Jenny Claire Heck | 2016 Sensing Silence. A workshop about silence and the body in the empty EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens by G.Vermeire, S.V.Biesen, C.Kakalis and Α.Vrakatseli | 2011 AAO academic workshop with Parsons The New School For Design, New York. Instructors: L.Matthews, M.Morris, L.Stergiou, R.Subramaniam | 2011 AAO academic workshop Université Paris 8, CΙTU research center of Paragraphe Laboratory. Coordinators: M.Benayoun, R.Gareus, L.Stergiou

Group exhibitions (selected): 2022 Invisible Cities, cur. Cube Gallery & The Project Gallery, Athens | 2021 Greece in USA, cur. S. Goudouna, Undercurrent, Brooklyn, New York | 2020 Salo VIII, Salon Erotique, cur. M.Xypolopoulou and L.Quenequem, Boulevard de Melimontant, Paris| 2018 Liquid rooms-The Labyrinth, cur. L.Curci, Palazzo Ca' Zanardi, Venice | 2017 Imaginary Homeland, cur.I.Papapostolou, The Loft gallery, Athens | 2016 Lo Maximo, cur. A. Kollaros, Artik gallery, Quito, Ecuador | Imago Ignota, cur. M. Zacharioudakis, Ekfrasi gallery, Athens | Portrait Cabinet, cur. G.Lintzeris, Cheapart gallery, Athens | New Era Eaudesea, Cur. I.Bazara, Cyprus Embassy, Athens | 2015 Beauty is The Method, cur. S.Bahtsetzis, The art gallery of Deree-The American College of Greece, Athens | Vandalism, cur.N.Giavropoulos, Cheapart gallery, Athens | Invisible Cities, cur.I.Papapostolou,Italian Institute, Athens | Reform Memory, cur.D.Vasilakou, Platforms project, Athens | 2014 Four artAZ artists, cur. A. Kollaros, 4411 Montrose Blvd, Houston Texas | States, cur. I.Papapostolou, Tsihrintzis foundation, Athens | Intercities,cur.V.Batagianni, AnantiCity Resort, Trikala | Private View, cur. A. Kollaros, Ennea9 gallery, Athens | 2013 Cultural Bridges Athens-Quito, cur. A. Kollaros, HomeIdentity Quito, Ecuador | 2012 Hidden Cities, cur. Luca Curci, Istanbul| 2011 AAO project, Parsons The New School for Design,Benaki Museum, Athens cur.L.Stergiou | 2011 Liquid Cities & Contemporary Identities, International Artexpo & Elmur,Street Screenings, Lleida, Spain, cur.L.Curci | 2011 Layering Athens, Beton7 gallery, Athens | Crossing Identities, cur.L.Curci, Morelia, Mexico | Meditations on e-books, cur.M.Karagianni, Hellenic Cosmos, Athens | 2010 MetArt Moves, cur. Z.Xagoraris, Kessanlis Laboratory, Athens| Hidden Athens, Τaf gallery, Athens, cur. T.Moutsopoulos | 2005 Visual Poetry, French Institut, Athens

Performances: 2006 Patras, Choephorae, by Jenny Rogers & Lee Breuer, sand painting. | 2014 "Pulsating Fields", in the Ancient Agora of Athens by Aemilia Papaphilippou, With the support of NEON Foundation. | 2015 Tama & Votives installation by Eleanna Martinou In-situ installation at 9 ENNEA, Athens. | 2016 Silent Stone I / Deucalion and Pyrrha An installation - performance by Eleanna Martinou, Delphi.

Sotirios Bahtsetzis note on Eleanna Martinou's work

"Everything is rhythm, the entire destiny of man is one heavenly rhythm, just as every work of art is one rhythm, and everything swings from the poetising lips of the god."According to Giorgio Agamben this statement by Germanromantic poet Friedrich Holderlin derives from a period of his life, 1807-43, that philologists usually define as the years of the poet's insanity. However Agamben finds in this one fragment of the poet's "incoherent speech" the "power that grants the work of art its original space". How is this so? Agamben explains:"Yet rhythm -as we commonly understand it- appears to introduce into this eternal flow a split and a stop. Thus in a musical piece, although it is somehow in time, we perceive rhythm as something that escapes the incessant flight of instants and appears almost as the presence of an atemporal dimension in time. In the same way, when we are before a work of art or a landscape bathed in the light of it's own presence, we perceive a stop in time, as though we were suddenly thrown into a more original time." The philosopher's meditation allows for a distinction between time understood as an infinite numerical succession and time as a momentous presence. The first can be symbolised by our chronometers and the second by the metronome, the device which, while producing regular, metrical ticks, helps musicians to internalise a clear sense of timing and tempo. This double figure of the chronometer versus the metronome can help us to understand the semiotic operations in Eleanna Martinou's painting.

The visual artist, a studied musician, often refers to the notion of rhythm as the underlying conceptual principle of her paintings. This is already visible in a 2005 series of paintings which constitute endless chromatic variations of an archaic Kouros, or in a 2008 series of mainly black and white portraits, which were conceived in accordance to the black and white keys of a piano. Martinou's paintings are visual equivalents of a perpetual dialectic of junction and disjunction or of relation and scission that inscribes the body in a continuum of space and time. Manual dexterity and the meticulous application characterise Martinou's body of work. However we wouldn't describe these paintings as grids, a term which resonates rather with the architectural concept of a structure or a scheme. They are rather kind of a maze, or a spiral, which confronts the viewer with the endless occupation of the artist's body with her chosen material. This endless handcrafting, in which the artist seems to translate labour that affects the senses into thinking and vice versa, epitomises the notion of the work of art as rhythm. Martinou's work is closer less to a language of architecture than to the language of nature, which according to Aristotelian physics, is rhythm that is, as the original principle of presence. This is probably the reason why we experience these "stops in time" as a more original time, something like the time, which occurs in meditation, or the recursive time of psychoanalysis, or, even better, the impossible time of being in love - probably the ultimate expression of life's rhythm.


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Eleanna Martinou

Artist

"The organization of Chaos as a Form. Everything is connected rhythmically."