Artist statement

My works are secret prayers, symbolic narratives on gradual spiritual ascent, human transcendence, the flee towards the divine. Even though inspired by specific images and personal experiences, I deliberately avoid iconographic storytelling. I transmute my feelings and thoughts into lines and abstract shapes, leaving the imagination free.

The Byzantine references to Virgin Mary’s hands and John Climacus’ ladder are transformed into contemporary vestiges, codified geometrical representations. They become diagonal lines leading the gaze from downwards upwards and vice versa, uniting the earthly with the divine element. They occupy my canvases, etchings and mosaics. They unify different images into a single painterly composition and enter, in three dimensional form, in the structure of my reliefs.

The reliefs are peculiar sculptural assemblages that develop on the wall like friezes or pillars that could extend ad infinitum. They are usually composed of wooden, marble or metallic units conglomerated to form the irregular geometrical substructure. The units, multiple trapeziums in different perspectives and sizes, appear as if twisting, enriching the constructions with movement, rhythm and energy.

At the beginning I hid the work’s substructure, embracing the various units entirely with fabrics so as to create a compact volume, a single whole which changes with the spectators’ movement in space. My interest in the active participation of the viewer led me to unveil the internal structure, making the wall part of the artistic composition, playing with the notions of full and void. My next step was to work with real space, with sculptures that emphasize the illusion of the perpetual transformation of forms as the visual angles of perception are multiplied.

Paintings, etchings, mosaics, reliefs and sculptures are characterized by a common thread: morphological simplicity which leads to the image’s essence and spirituality. They are allegories that function like supplications for a better world, full of calm and love, artistic charms against violence and the catastrophe brought about by wars.