Opy Zouni, "Order in Chaos", retrospective exhibition, Benaki Museum

Описание: The exhibition presents the work of the well-known artist Opy Zouni (1941-2008).
This retrospective tribute by the Benaki Museum to the artist’s creative life, which spanned almost 50 years (1960-2008), includesrepresentative examples from the wide range of her artistic career. The exhibition is divided into ten separate sections which followthe artist’s professional path thematically and chronologically. It includes paintings, sculptures, constructions, objets trouvés, collages, and installations.
The presentation is supplemented by an installation-video of eight minutes, titled Columns-Shadows, and images taken from the four elements of nature: earth, air, water and fire, which run through her subject matter, constructing and deconstructing the compositions of her works.

Opy Zouni was one of the most important representatives of postwar geometric abstract art and neo-constructivist rationale of the second half of the 20th century. Having dual heritage (Greek-Egyptian), with a strong classical education, she adopted geometric structure and abstract mathematical thinking along with the modern conceptions of art she had encountered on hermany trips abroad. The focus of her exploration was the mental and, at the same time, emotional space, our familiar physical space. In Opy Zouni’s work art and science are inextricably linked. Science for her meant the investigation of reality while art was the expression of beauty. She used geometry as a door from the material world to the spiritual and created a virtual reality using Renaissance perspective freely, with one or more vanishing points. She walked a line between dream, fantasy and reality, logic and sensitivity, a scientific mathematical approach and spontaneity.

Exhibition curator: Eleni Athanassiou