NEW ARTWORKS: Eleni Zouni – dreamideamachine ART VIEW

This column, is hosting new artworks, of younger and older artists who either are on exhibition this days or never exhibited, in order to grope together with the artists all the aspects of their work. Eleni Zouni belongs to the contemporary artists that I particularly like her work, so I keep a close eye on it, all these years. What I particularly like is the way Eleni Zouni handles the void and the fullness, with white color always playing the first and decisive role. However, in her brand new series of works that we first present for the first time through our magazine, it surprises me with the overthrow of white color and the use of black that is functioning as a blackboard upon which a new narrative is recorded….and blue is balancing inbetween…

By Efi Michalarοu
Photo: Eleni Zouni Archive

Mrs Zouni, monitoring closely your work all this years, we note that drawing always plays an important role. What it means for your drawing? Where does the need for drawing stemming from?

It seems as though my need to communicate was better fulfilled through drawing and motion. So, I followed that trend. Then, at some point, when, through academic research, I discovered and knowingly followed my way in painting, drawing became my medium of choice that enabled me to create my own personal space and show life situations. Down the line, it became clear to me that drawing includes gesture, that drawing detects the space between things, and that it incorporates the element of fluidity, just as the living flow of speech. Drawing became the world of graphic action of experiences, the imprint of body movement traces, the original thought recorded on paper. It is perhaps the space where one can get into contact with what one cannot give a name to.

Nowadays and as a result of the economic crisis, drawing has redefined and made a dynamic comeback in the art world, but for 20 years in the Greek the International Art Scene it was an unsung hero in contrast to other means of expression like installations, video and photography. Have you been tempted all these years to try other means of expression?

Although I never gave up painting, at some point in 2000 and for some years after that, I took up video art, got my hands on some video editing software, and in 2004 I presented the “Wonderful People” exhibition at Medusa Art Gallery, which was curated by Efi Strousa. Said exhibition included a set of works with a purely socio-political concept, comprised of a video and digitally processed images, as well as four large-scale works of mixed technique. The basic elements of those works, those small modules, came from model figures that took their shape and became simpler through the years. In 2016, the “In a Manner of Speaking” exhibition was presented at the same gallery, curated by Christoforos Marinos. A set of small porcelain figurines was presented alongside the drawings. In 1998, I participated with a large-scale installation in the exhibition “We are Elsewhere, we are Going Elsewhere”, Aeschylia-98, curated by Lena Kokkini.

Your new series of drawing entitled “Chronicles”, contains elements you’re your previous series, we already know and a lot of news. At first the black background, looks like it defines the space in another way, since white color is acting like chalk on a blackboard and we have the feeling that it defines the space. Can you tell us, how did black come out? What does it represents? And why do you choose this these days?

Recently, I participated in two very important exhibitions, namely “Shell / The Politics of Being” and “+9”, where I was given the opportunity by the curator K. Prapoglou to draw on blackboards in the Senior High School of Kypseli and on a huge black wall in Iera Odos, using chalks. In my studio, I took up the thread from the last exhibitions, and I’m now working on the new cycle of painting named “Chronicles”. The sight of a blackboard brings to mind strange memories of anxiety to resolve problems, or memories of stylish writing by literature teachers, or careless scribbling by students. The way that appear the lines and the points that become signs, seem more intense and straight on a black surface. The limited space seems to be capturing the time and rendering it as a simple graphic memory. The white color could be the antidote to noise and polyphonic voices.

In a text you sent me to express your thoughts on “Chronicles”, you are highlighting your new series “I pass through life, I feel, think and make combinations. I exist in Nature and I’m hearing its sounds. I am in the city, listening to the noises, feeling around me and bombarded with information”. I use it unedited, because I feel that in some works, the white lines refer noeticly to music notes, for me personally it’s like listening to Mozart’s Requiem.

It is said that there’s no life without music (Sine Musica Nulla Vita). Sounds become signals, rhythm, communication, writing.

Whereas in some other works of this series, through the geometry and the patterns of flowers, the coexistence of nature with architecture emerges. How concerns you as an artist? How important do you think this coexistence is in the contemporary cities?

When I’m working, there are certain words that come to mind, such as movements, courses, structure, dead-end, conversation, launching, confinement, excavation, stratification, transparency, systems, development, evolution, connection … the meaning of which seem to guide my painting together with my personal experiences and the music I listen to. When I’m out in the Nature, I’m not anymore moved to paint it, either I have the need to listen to the music. There, I am simply left to the flow and the sounds of Nature, and just observe it. I listen and enjoy. The essence of such observation and communication is then recalled and recorded by drawing spreads of biomorphic shapes.

Finally, after thanking you, I would like to tell us about your choice in the absence of color and the minimum color alternation from black to white with some suspicion of earth colors and shadows. These artworks, on the one hand, refer to Andrei Tarkovsky’s frames, but at the same time they resemble psychograms.

I’ve always been sparing in the use of colours and have used them in a quite clear manner, although I made heavy use of certain of them in the past. The semantics of colours affect the viewer and guide the viewer’s emotions. Perhaps I need to vanish in more quiet, silent and objective references. However, I sometimes make discrete use of colours, by borrowing the spirituality of blue, or the speed of red, or using sienna as basic colour. Back in the day, I drew lessons from Tarkofsky’s writings. There are certain creators who have not only influenced our visual perception but have mostly helped us accept the poetry that’s hidden inside us.

Download Greek Version of Interview here.