Past Events - EXPO - Ismini Bonatsou

Event

Title:: EXPO - Ismini Bonatsou
When:: 19.01.2007 at

Description

Isminis Bonatsou knits a magical and fantastic world that includes folk, symbolic and surrealistic elements assimilated from various styles and techniques. It conveys a delightful freshness, a certain childishness and a sense of humor. In her world of fables the protagonists are children and women, alone or in pairs, coexisting harmoniously in a microcosm of fruit, fish, and animáis. Less than perfect, these are creatures gifted with minor humanising defects that exorcise any sense of false idealisation. In most cases the figures are depicted head on, schematised and monumental, innerly charged, their eyes reminiscent of the Fayum portaits. They are trapped in time and unreal spaces, without perspective, and remain strangers to their surrounding. In some of her most recent paintings space is structured geometrically, in a manner that refers to the old Flemish masters Pieter Bruegel and Rogier van der Weyden in particular. In terms of colour they might hint towards a more suffocating version of Van Gogh. Her cool flat colours of phychological stress and symbolic meaning seldom betray light. Midnight blue is dominant as a rule and a slice of the moon accompanies her figures. Strong outlines define her subject, while simplistic, childlike elements inhabit a mysterious space. Ismini Bonatsou can narrate her stories with equal ease on both Lilliputian and large scale canvases. Small scale works of just a few centimeters can function as rough sketches as well as autonomously, and can potentially be combined with one another so that each one can represent a motif in a final composite image.