PHOTO: Agni Chronopoulou-The Garden of the Hesperides
Agni Chronopoulou presents a series of photographs created during the difficult period of incarceration and quarantine, where she had the time to record and observe precisely everything that no one notices, in moments when the rhythms of life are much more intense. Thus, through a personal journey, in complete harmony with nature and its primordial path, she created the series “The Garden of the Hesperides”*.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Agni Chronopoulou’s Archive
In her solo exhibition titled “The Garden of Hesperides”, Agni Chronopoulou shows a series of digital photographs that focus on the themes that interest and preoccupy her, such as: decay, time, moment, myths, and the books of Odysseas Elytis and C. P. Cavafy. The photographs in the series “The Garden of the Hesperides”, contain multiple readings and comments on nature, which we both need but we cruelly treat, through profit and destruction, but at the same time we cannot resist its unparalleled beauty and wisdom. Through abstraction, the artist transforms leaves and plants into free sculptural forms. The artis is using throughout her artistic career many different expressive means and techniques, such as molds, paper sculptures, drawings, photographs, and videos. In a dystopian period of humanity, where the light seems to have dimmed and the future landscape is blurry, she reexamines the world “From a different perspective and on a different scale. I started a work, a world of colors and shapes, from observing plants,” as she characteristically notes. Through the explosion of colors and shapes, the abstraction and the new forms that arise, Agni Chronopoulou creates a new narrative, where the viewer follows an artistic path, where realism and dream coexist in a new world, her own world, where through dystopia, fear, and doubt, in the collective and personal unconscious, joy, light, and optimism are emerging. Also, through this new series, we observe the connection of the artist’s works with the book she created four years ago, titled “The 1001 Colors,” as well as with the fairytale “1001 Nights” with its oriental atmosphere, combined with the ancient Greek myth of the “Garden of the Hesperides” which is very Western, but for her, is the perfect combination and source of inspiration, from which a timeless and contemporary relationship arises.
* In Greek mythology, the Hesperides were the nymphs of the evening and golden light of sunset. They were daughters of either Nyx (the goddess of night) or Atlas (the Titan who held up the heavens), and were said to live in a garden located in the far west, beyond the reaches of the ocean. The Hesperides were famous for guarding a tree that bore golden apples, which were said to grant immortality to anyone who ate them. The tree was a gift from Gaia, the goddess of the earth, to Hera, the queen of the gods, on the occasion of her marriage to Zeus. The apples were so precious that they were entrusted to the care of the Hesperides, along with a dragon named Ladon, who was tasked with protecting them.
Photo: Agni Chronopoulou, from the series “The Garden of the Hesperides”, © & Courtesy the artist
Info: ArtZone 42 Gallery, 42 Vasileos Konstantinou Ave, Athens, Greece, Duration: 17/3-18/4/2023, Days & Hours: Tue & Thu-Fri 15:00-21:00, Wed & Sat 11:00-15:00, www.artzone42.gr/
