PRESS RELEASE
Katerina Serafetinidou
‘A Light You Do Not Forget’
Opening day: Thursday 18th January 2024, 19:00-21:30
Duration: 18th January – 10th February 2024
Skoufa Gallery presents Katerina Serafetinidou’s painting exhibition titled ‘A Light You Do Not Forget’ which will open on Thursday 18th January 2024 and will run until the 10th February 2024. More than 30 medium or large size paintings in acrylics or mixed media on canvas, executed between 2008 and 2023, reveal Serafetinidou’s esoteric landscape approaches.
Talking about her work, she explains ‘My work is my visual confession as well as an open invitation to any spectator to participate with his own thoughts and interpretations. I use a wide variety of materials such as sand, powdered pastels and collage in order to create complicated textures that reflect life’s complexity and emotional depth… During the last fifteen years, I work at my studios in Athens and Hydra, trying to discover my visionary world’.
Katerina Serafetinidou persistently, continuously and with an undiminished passion, dedicated herself to the world of color and composition. Takis Mavrotas, the art critic and historian states about her painting: ‘It is about unexpected landscapes, that expand beyond any given space or time limits. These landscapes are either brown or grey, as seen during sunset, when the wind diminishes. They are foggy landscapes that blur our sight and their sensation of humidity brings to mind the moment that the rain stops. Serafetinidou is a landscape tracer. She paints with a sense of sobriety and harmony. She is not interested in a detailed depiction of her subject and sinks her glance in the earth and the sky as she touches nature’s unexpected beauty. At the same time, while she keeps herself at a distance, she gazes at contemporary big cities and pictures them in a critical and poetic mood. Sometimes they are rendered in grey with added red colors and at other times in earthy colors causing a plausible mystery around them. Her paintings never reveal a specific geographical place. Her spaces function as an animal shelter that is independent and separate from national provenances or class divisions. The human figure is a unit that seeks its way within the labyrinth of the big cities, far from nature and the peace found in small towns or villages. This is apparent especially in the paintings ‘Urban Reverie’ (acrylic on canvas, 110 x 220 cm), ‘Infinite Reflections’ (acrylic on canvas, 100 x 150 cm) and ‘Mystery City Whispers’ (mixed media on canvas, 60 x 60 cm) among others. It is about landscapes of contemporary big cities where people end, forgetting that this is where one can save or destroy oneself. Serafetinidou’s aim is to approach her work with an emotional clarity that resists decay. Her research on the state of the ultimate bliss to the state of the ultimate despair, has no end. The painting ‘Lighthouse Amidst the Waves’ (acrylic on canvas, 120 x 200 cm), implies worries and responsibilities. The rough sea challenges her creative activity and the symbol of the lighthouse surrounded by frothy waves, imply her existential anxieties, her dreams and her life responsibility. The painting ‘Horizon Passage’ (acrylic and oil pastel on canvas, 140 x 200 cm) depicts the liquid passage from Rineia to Delos, revealing Serafetinidou’s love for all those places that revive memories from the distant past…’.
Katerina Serafetinidou was born in Athens in 1967. She studied Applied Economics and Marketing & Advertising in London where she came in contact with modern art and it was during this time that she studied the work of the Great Masters at the National Gallery in London, the Tate Modern and the Royal Academy of Arts. After returning to Greece, Katerina worked in advertising for over a decade before shifting her focusto her family’s century-old carpet business, renowned for its rare collection of rugs. Throughout her artistic journey, the elegance and refinement of the deep tones and colors of antique rugs are evidentin her work. All through this period, she attended art history seminars at the Museum of Cycladic Art, the American College of Athens and at the MoMA, took private lessons from renowned artists from the Museum of Cycladic Art and Central St Martins in London and set up her own studio in 2012. In 2017, she participated in a group exhibition at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens and in 2018, she participated in an international presentation of young artists in the form of a slide show at the MoMA in New York.
