I Shall be Your Eve

Τhe Blender Gallery in collaboration with Varvara Roza Galleries, presents the group exhibition titled I Shall be Your Eve. The artists participating are Ermina Avramidou, Charoula Nikolaidou, Eliona Ntoukni and Christina Papaioannou.  Each artist, in her own way, assesses human existence. They all focus on the feminine side of things, unavoidably suggesting the male element too, and they ultimately pay homage to the imperfections that render each human being unique; imperfections that were so deeply envied by the Gods: the mortals’ passions, concerns, simplistic lifestyle, and complicated relationships.  In art, Eva is often portrayed as the evil victimizer rather than the victim, which results in a negative portrayal of women and sexuality. However, in the exhibition I shall be your Eve, through the work of the four artists, we choose to view Eva’s actions as the beginning of Man’s real journey into life and knowledge. The First Woman, represents the transition from the Superior Being (God) to the human existence. Like a modern and femme fatale Eva that took a bite of the forbidden fruit from the “tree of knowledge”, each of the four artists searches, answers about love, time, the universe and the man’s place in it . Εrmina Avramidou born in Thessaloniki now lives and works in London. She experiments particularly with light and is interested in its depiction. She wants her paintings to be sources of light, emitting their own rays. Her paintings reflect stages of her own journey, of which she was unaware when it was occurring. This is one of the greatest excitements in art, the capacity to make the invisible reveal itself and integrate it in our conscious existence. One can recognize that the landscapes depicted in her work and the way they are presented resemble mysterious landscapes of primitive origin. Charoula Nikolaidou lives and works in Thessaloniki. Her art is gestural and instinctual, driven by an axis that is both personal and experiential, the sense of perception playing a vital role. The sense of time is ever present in her works, represented by every element or brushstroke.  The relation between figures and the empty space is one of the opposites but also complementary at the same time. Through the artist’s powerful gestures on the canvas, the paintings of Charoula Nikolaidou can be seen as existential fields of anticipation, where body and spirit, love and loneliness meet and at the same time are conflicting each other and also reflect the thirst for life, as well as the poetic and therapeutic role of art. Eliona Ntoukni lives and works in Athens. Through her works, she wishes to depict her spontaneity and her deep need for artistic expression. Her themes revolve mainly around her personal experiences expressing agonies, passions, fears and internal battles. Ntoukni’s work seeks to evoke emotions to the viewer while revealing her concern about human relationships. Christina Papaioannou born in Thessaloniki, lives and works in Crete. In her work, shapes and figures are deconstructed and reshaped into collage-like compositions. The artistic surface is transformed into a kind of atlas where every imprint can be read as a narration of its own, whilst at the same time is a piece of a bigger, complete structure. Through the deconstruction of form and the study of the fragmented body, a cosmic collage is born. This arrangement where the tragedy of human existence is paired with man’s incapacity to find and restore our original reasoning for existence and to ultimately discover its hidden meaning.