PRESS RELEASE
Irini Iliopoulou
«Bella and Harry’s society: a Farm»
Opening: Thursday 16th January 2025, 19:30 – 21:30
Duration: 16th January – 8th February 2025
Skoufa Gallery presents Irini Iliopoulou’s new solo exhibition “Bella and Harry’s society: a Farm” which opens on Thursday 16th January 2025, from 19:30 to 21:30 and will run until the 8th February 2025.
A new exhibition at Skoufa Gallery marking the beginning of the new year: Irini Iliopoulou’s latest work creates a new world that emerges from her imagination and aesthetics and is totally different from everything else that she has shown at her previous solo exhibitions. Her main characters stand firmly on the ground and move in the natural habitat of a farm in imaginary lands.
The presence of the animals is unpredicted and brings to life Iliopoulou’s work. Bella and Harry’s society is depicted in twenty-five small and large paintings and in seventy-five small clay sculptures. The journalist Nikos G. Mastropavlos writes about this group of artworks: ‘Iliopoulou’s artistic society of animals symbolizes the human quest for the ultimate simplicity and innocence in life. Here and now, it is not the dreamy astonishment emerging through the mysteries of nature, that carries this message, but nature itself that captivates with its truth and presence. Through it, its story is revealed and the passion for its conservation is expressed in a skillfully artistic manner’.
Once more, Irini Iliopoulou’s exhibition is accompanied by an elegant catalogue, with a passage written by the author Andrea Schroth:
‘The painter has often drawn animals from her imagination, which later she placed artistically in her landscapes, sometimes half-hidden and at other times camouflaged as if in a hide and seek game. When she started sculpting small clay animals during the summer of 2021, on the island of Kasos, she managed to create her own animal universe which she incorporated into her paintings at a later stage. At the same time, she returned to her favorite and familiar compositions with landscapes, to which she introduced her companions, the animals’.
The catalogue also includes a text by Louisa Karapidaki who underlines that: ‘Iliopoulou’s descriptive iconography has a joyful, realistic narrative even when it seems like idealized imaginary creations, and her everyday stories from the animal kingdom transfer us to other worlds that are familiar and un-known at the same time. In her paradise-like landscapes, with heavy vegetation and watery spaces, various animals from an imaginary farm become the main characters (…). Her compositions are flooded with light. Nature’s vibrant colors emerge artistically, and together with the animals’ movement, they radiate a sense of vibrancy and joy for life’.
