Kalliopi Asargiotaki
Crystal Gazer
Curated by Elizabeth Plessa
Opening: Tuesday 17 May 2022
Duration: 17 May – 11 June 2022
Kalliopi Asargiotaki presents at Skoufa Gallery, in Athens, her new body of work under the title “Crystal Gazer”. In 20 large oil paintings and a multifold array of smaller works, Asargiotaki paints monumental portraits of women wearing ornate clothes, precious jewels, as well as veils and warrior armours, exploring the power of beauty, the need for protection, the magic of transformation, threat and death. In works where memories of myths coexist with questions of today, Asargiotaki’s crystal gazing women are in search of the fleeting present and the mysterious future, between sight and insight. As art historian and exhibition curator, Elizabeth Plessa, notes in the introductory essay of the bilingual accompanying catalogue:
“It is insight that Asargiotaki’s crystal gazers seek, holding before their eyes crystal balls that will reveal the future of their desires. Each damp eye, each frozen tear, each precious stone, each crystal sphere, each bead, pearl and chunk of glass in these works becomes the playful fragment of a fragile transparency, capturing on its curved surface that introverted glow which recalls the spiritual. Among Sibylic figures, Kalliopi Asargiotaki looks for an enchanted world, in whose crystal balls the distant is contained within the proximate, tomorrow within today, the self within the reflection of its image.”
