Irini Karayannopoulou

As a painter, IK defines a kind of ritualistic process, a self-constricting protocol, in which she works intensively, obsessionaly, until exhaustion, both of the subject and of her own energy: hundred of self-portraits, series of small-size canvas (bulldozers, trucks as well as reproductions of classic masters, black&white drawings of prolific dwarfs…)

The recurrent element in these propaedeutical works is the opposition she sets between the subject chosen and its representation in terms of scale or medium, so inappropriate to the goal. what is left since the painting is denounced as soon as enounced?

Her recent works in view in the show room have to be perceived as parts of a kind of mosaic: intervals, fragmented moments in which nothing is really defined but already lost: black fireworks, rose or green skies, impossible landscapes…

IK doesn’t try to depict a scene or an atmosphere, moreover her work is a game-like strategy, an ephemeral state in mutation, in suspension between reality and imagination.

(Excerpt from the text of the group exhibition Unclosed Stories, Athens, 2004)