As we walk to her studio, artist Io Angeli tells stories about her neighborhood. He lives in Paleo Faliro but comes to Thissio every day for work. For 10 years now, he has been walking along approximately the same route, crossing the city, with the exception of the pandemic period, when, to get to the studio, he did, as he says, slalom, that is, small zigzags, avoiding the crowd.

Slalom is also the title of her new solo show at the Zumbulakis Gallery, four years after her previous work was presented in the same space. The exhibition, which opens tomorrow, presents drawings and paintings, mostly large.

“The boxes will still be in the studio,” he told me when we set up an interview, so we met the day before the paintings were moved to the gallery. The isotonicity characteristic of Angeli’s painting – tones of blue and green, small “sparks” of pomegranate, yellow and orange – calms the atmosphere and harmonizes with the winter light pouring from the windows.

The workshop has been put in order, the finished works are now on the walls, the painting materials – he uses mostly hagiographic powders – and the brushes are neatly in place. “I work on the floor, I start from the bottom and then lift the box vertically and continue,” he says, describing the way he paints, which explains the wide areas of the canvas where the paint spreads like watercolor. , and lines-traces that are formed without any touch.

“The paintings in the collection are each of the theatrical scenery, with the difference that the famous “fourth wall” is no longer on the side of the viewer, who, cutely embarrassed, allows himself to be carried away into the depths of the stage. , to the quintessence, where life is preparing to move again, to come to the fore again,” writes Achilleas Kyriakidis in his note to the exhibition. As for the name slalom, it is nothing but these small changes in our daily lives that allow our eyes to look at things from a different angle.

I work on the floor, start at the bottom, then lift the box vertically and continue.

“The quarantine was a unique period, very decisive for my work. I felt it opened up new channels and pushed me to rediscover humble materials, i.e. pencil and paper,” the artist explains, referring to the 20 drawings included in this particular exhibition. The house arrest announcement prompted her to make a quick trip to the stationery store for paper, she recalls.

The drawings were mostly done at home, with pencils – from the softest to the hardest – and thick lines that create black-and-white, dreamy worlds with plasticity. “Most designs are prima vista,” he says. “I love randomness when it sneaks into work, but you have to be able to see it. And accept it. Having matured, I think now it is possible to overcome the censorship of oneself and others, not to be limited by their opinion.

After three decades of consistent painting, she herself seems to have settled into her art. “When you’re younger, you learn, you learn, you try, you experiment. Over the years, things settle in us and they become who we really are,” he says. The gardens depicted in this particular section of the work originated in the summers of her childhood in the villages of Mytilene. “I remember walking through mud, I remember nature entering and taking over abandoned houses, I remember animals walking between our legs,” he explains.

The space described in the episode “Slalom” is vague, but the city exists as a reminder. Houses, public buildings, solitary confinement or yapi are scattered in places unknown but empirically familiar. The buildings to which she constantly refers in her works seem here to be rather empty shells, which, nevertheless, retain their geometry. The austerity of the architectural structure of the past gives way to the spontaneity of “writing”, as the painter calls the repetitive lines, drops, scales or spots that create a palimpsest of the picture. “Art works more in the stomach, first it is born in our intestines, and then it reaches the mind. If it were the other way around, it would be fake,” he says.

The duration of the exhibition is until March 11.