Renowned painter Katia Varvaki will present her new, captivating series of works titled “Time Blows Through Dreams,” starting November 1, 2024, at Astrolavos Gallery. The enigmatic title invites introspective reflection and interpretation.
Art historian and curator of the exhibition, Iris Kritikos, notes:
“In most of her work, Katia Varvaki revisits themes of eternal youth and touches on the passage of time and changing seasons. Even if her images depict idyllic natural landscapes, sometimes void of human presence or inhabited by children, nymphs, fairies, and young girls, there is a deep concern about the impending change in this tender moment — Spring, both as a bleeding condition, precious yet often fluid and traumatic.
Her exploration of aging, coinciding with her own transition into a second adulthood and potential self-awareness, has also been evident, as she has gifted us with a significant illustrative cycle on this theme.
In Varvaki’s works, we see children who don’t want to grow up and adults who wish they could become children again. Small orchestrated miracles take place behind transparent glass walls, blue trees rustle in unknown fields, a small tired dragon falls gently asleep, and an Alice invites us to a new Wonderland. These palimpsests, rich with dense episodes, magical flying carpet-gardens, inventive kaleidoscopic transparencies, and bold floating colors, crafted from painstaking, layered sketches, unleash violet, blue, and pink splashes of suspended material. We gently encounter another dimension of reality. It is a passage into a dream meadow, embroidered with unknown fairy tales, secret riddles, and handmade childhood toys, sprinkled with the delicate dust of exquisite lace memory and the completed yet ever-present time.
Varvaki’s works follow invisible shooting stars, reversing the fate of Time, flipping the hourglass of reason, overturning the accepted truth of things, secretly entering the White Rabbit’s tunnel, escalating the adult-childlike desire, and reviving the lost inherent tenderness. Their transparent, transitional matter, with an almost metaphysical intuition, unmatched grace, and abundant artistic talent, caresses the visible and summons the invisible.”
Info
Opening: November 1, 2024, 8:00 PM – 10:30 PM
Astrolavos Gallery, Dexamenis Square, Kolonaki
Exhibition hours: Tuesday to Friday, 12:00 PM – 4:00 PM and 5:00 PM – 8:00 PM, Saturday 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM.
