«Crossroads» is a new solo exhibition of a retrospective nature, by visual artist Lina Pigadioti at Literary Society Parnassos in Athens Greece. It encompasses a dynamic collection of mostly older - since 2014, but also new works.
Crossroads versus one-way street or pluralism against unidimensional reality? Crossroads have an open-ended meaning. They open up possibilities for diverse directions in life, in contrast to the one-way street. “Crossroads are a point of tension, equal to the flow of energy”, says precisely Pigadioti.
Her seductive new series are a metaphysical realm for the purging of human suffering: 12 Apostles, Suffering, Trapped, Denatured, Rescued, Experimenting, Exaltation are the major sections which intersect the exhibition.
Pigadioti’s art practice merges the documentation and the technical methods with the expressive means: painting, printmaking, collage, mixed media, sculpture and installation which all reveal her varied working processes, art education and personal history which becomes universal. Her practice has always been nourished by a multitude of sources: poetic, philosophical, religious, scientific, and political. But in this new extensive body of work, she urges us to contemplate on the recent global disaster, war, terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015 and pandemic, signified by the symbol of the cross – representing humanity under attack. She plays with Christian iconography, but the icons at its heart are not those of classical painting, they become iconic merely because of the role they play in all our everyday histories.
Abstract art has always been associated with spiritualism: see Mondrian, Malevich, Rothko and Rauschenberg. Pigadioti creates a dialogue particularly with Rauschenberg in an idiosyncratic manner. Materials as diverse as re-board, prints, etchings, clippings, monotypes, photographs, text, ephemera, and expressionistic brushstrokes, frequently evoke personal memories of childhood. For Pigadioti, the use of collage in her compositions seems often to serve as a kind of shorthand for indicating a work's connection to personal narratives of self and identity, working in the shadow of this Abstract Expressionism. With respect to Rauschenberg’s famous quote, "Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. I try to act in the gap between the two". If painting is the interspace between art and life, then the application of objects with personal meaning plays an integral part in Rauschenberg's work, same as it does at Pigadioti’s «Crossroads».
Spirituality and perception manifest themselves as forms of enigmatic complexity highlighted by repetition of printed patterns created as a syllabus throughout her work but more emphatically seen in the series entitled ‘Mosaics’ (mixed media and prints on re-board) and into the eponymous piece «Crossroads» 2016 (printmaking on paper and re-board with neon sign).
We may also encounter in the exhibition painterly or sculptural adventures, that have exercised Pigadioti’s interest in the past i.e. «Puzzle me» and «Puzzle me Not» 2017 (Mixed media on Plexiglas and wood). And at the «Sections vs. Intersections» -large scale series which was first shown in her solo show in London in 2015, found imagery from her family history, hand written words, poetry quotes and a wooden red ladder leading us up to heavens, all stuck together on cross sections and intersected panels, gather the reminiscent of cataleptic existence. Depicted also in the new series entitled «Hurt», images of the Pope are trapped underneath the layers of red brushstrokes where meaningful words connecting matter, emotion and memory. While her images engage with the impact of time and the aesthetic experience that emerges from wear, tear, and decay, -referencing the famous wall removals by artist Rena Papaspyrou- awakening to us the feeling of spoilage that time leaves on matter, and similarly the marks of decay on the human body. Lettering, red color, textures and random incidences complete the “syllabus” of her communication bible. It is as if language itself has become a material, a sculptural medium of human exaltation.
Christina Mitrentse, curator