Pavlina Vagioni
“SIREN SYMPHONY IN G SHARP”
Visual Music in Four Movements
6-29 October 2022
Kappatos Gallery, 12 Athinas Street, Athens, presents artist Pavlina Vagioni in her first Solo Exhibition in a multidimensional visual experience inspired by the mythological creatures in the Odyssey with the title Siren Symphony in G sharp.
A “Staging,” a contemporary musical approach to a painterly, digital, sculptural, live performance, and multimedia art event in four parts-movements, in conjunction with modern technology and digital NFTs:
1- Phantasmagoria of the Sirens- Allegro con Brio (paintings, wall installation)
2- Siren Topologies-Adagio (sculptures, floor, time)
3- The Siren Interstices- Scherzo (kinetic works)
4- The Encounter-Rondo (room installation “rondo-isle,” audiovisual projection, live performance, NFTs)
Just like a symphonic work with unfolding variations in time, the holistic, almost chaotic, and simultaneously entirely calculated installation of Vagioni is a visual symphony unfolding in the space of Kappatos Gallery. The show’s theme is the mysticism of the Siren creatures, which the artist has been researching for the last years, using either translated excerpts from the Homeric text or mathematical notions for her artwork titles.
The tonality of the Siren Symphony – G sharp – is the height of the opening note of the artist’s vocalise song, who is also a soprano singer, that integrates into the musical fugue of seascapes, whales, and birds in the fourth and last movement of the show.
In the first movement, the idea behind the theme of the painterly and digital paintings is to intentionally omit the female element – gender of the Sirens and emphasize their avian nature. The bird is an ancient symbol of transcendence, the soul, a spirit of the dead with an ability to communicate with gods or enter into a higher state of consciousness, thought, knowledge and imagination. A cage of birds represents the mind, according to Plato. In the Odyssey, the Siren-bird represents the entrapment of the mind. A metaphorical transfixion where our ego is endlessly recycled.
In the second movement, the works have an earth-tone color palette. They are the evolution of the idea behind a former kinetic installation titled Anthemoessa. They consist of six variations of sculptural frescoes made of bronze and leather, a mixed media painting, and a floor installation. As their title suggests, Siren Topologies could be viewed as a symbolic topological space of the island of the sirens. In book 12 of the Odyssey, the witch Circe gives a haunting description of the island. A meadow with “a great heap of bones of moldering men, and round the bones the skin is shriveling” (Murray translation). In mathematics, a topology is a structure that allows continuous deformation of subspaces and all kinds of continuity. Once you hear the Sirens, you slowly decay (leather fragments of skin tones) on their flowery meadow, and you are eternally trapped.
In the third movement, inside a dark room of the gallery space, the kinetic light work We know all things that come to pass upon the fruitful earth is prevalent like an all-seeing eye.
In the fourth and last movement, the scenographic background of the artist is evident. By transforming the gallery space into an island, she draws the visitors into an engulfing video projection where they can experience once, the live performance on the show’s opening night on October 6, 8-11pm. Also, on the opening day, 100 still images of the video will be launched as NFTs via the PINSL platform. They will be available to the public for the first time in digital and/or physical form. On the show’s closing day on October 29th, the room installation’s digital animation and audio content will also be dropped as an NFT.
Pavlina Vagioni is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts. She studied painting under professors Yannis Psychopaidis and Aggelos Antonopoulos and stage design with Lili Pezanou. Additionally, she is a diplomated classical singer. Her studios are in Athens, Greece, and Houston, Texas, USA. Her works have been exhibited in various shows in Greece and abroad and in international art publications and books.
Opening Thursday 6 October, 20.00 – 23.00
6-29 October 2022
Wed. – Fri. 12:00-20:00, Sat. 12:00-15:00.
Metro station Monastiraki
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