Lila Polenaki

Eleni Koroneou Gallery is pleased to present the new work by Lila Polenaki in her seventh solo exhibition. Lila Polenaki was born in Athens in 1964. She studied painting in Berlin, where she lived until 2006. She currently lives and works in Athens.

In her previous work the artist composes collages made of heterogeneous materials, developing a singular artistic vocabulary. A deconstructed female heritage, pieces of fabric for household use, women’s clothing, tablecloths, lace, dresses, wrapping paper, handkerchiefs and napkins are her materials. These, having first been treated on the canvas, are blended on the painted surface in order to compose the spaces where a female hypostasis directs roles and attitudes in relation to her history and the world.

In the present series of works Lila Polenaki borrows figures from printed paper posters of women’s clothing advertisements. The artist finds them soon after their removal and shortly before they are thrown away. The paper silhouettes, carefully separated from their original environment, are transferred on the canvas surface with the use of painting techniques such as collage, printing and stencil.
The cut up forms, drawn with scissors, sometimes spring up from the rough white canvas like bleeding outlines and other times emerge from dense collages, made of paper and textile findings that belong to the artist’s personal collection.
Removed from their advertising purpose, the female figures are incorporated into the painted space in attractive exhibitionistic poses, thus redefining their position and their expressive power in images/mental landscapes, open to multiple interpretations in the eyes of the viewer.
Shadows, cut outlines, traces, leftovers from female bodies/alter egos of the creator, are dissected and reconstructed on the painted surface in a continuous effort to handle their substance and memory.

The exhibition title eyewear, also borrowed from the advertising material, inspires in the artist a tendency for deconstruction and wordplay –eyewear/ as in a filter for vision or aware /as in a filter for consciousness or even I wear/ as in the certain weight that each female body carries. The way the artist reads, listens and understands this word corresponds to the method in which she attempts to detect multiple levels within the image.