On Wednesday October 14th, 2020, PIASA will present a selection of pieces created by the Greek artist Maria Vlandi.
The plastic arts are a process opposed to that of sculpture, just as abstraction is opposed to figuration.
Maria Vlandi uses these two contrasts to create her sculptures. She introduces us to a dialogue of forms and spaces, to the presence of continuous, broken or corresponding forms, to the dynamism of dimensions and horizontal density, to the thickness of the material.
In her series of "Formats", the clay forms are cut vertically in depth and the surface lets the spectator's gaze penetrate into a dark space, allowing our imagination to perceive a divine emptiness.
Maria Vlandi (born 1952)
Untitled, 'Formats series' - Unique piece
Estimate : 3000 / 6000 €
With the same sensibility, Vlandi studies the shape of her ceramic volumes and tries to bring textures, colours and multiple scratches to the surface for her "Faces" series. Like a confrontation with the nakedness of form, she tries to clothe her volumes like the Sumerian sculptors 5000 years ago. The hatching they applied to the still soft ceramics dressed bell-shaped or cylindrical volumes and symbolised divinities that were placed in sacred places.
For Maria Vlandi, engraving became a tool of poetry on the surface of ceramics. When it is deep and tears a shape, it is junction, identifies with emptiness, leads to an enigmatic theology, like that of Lucio Fontana, and is not justified.
Maria Vlandi (born 1952)
Untitled, 'Sequences series'- Unique piece
Estimate : 3000 / 6000 €
Yet these superficial scratches can be a pitfall for Vlandi, they can trap the form and cause it to be interpreted as merely decorative and call into question its autonomy as a volume of earth in space.
Engraving, considered by the artist as the application of a tool to a surface, must be seen here as a visual element, a constituent of the work.
It is a continuous and millenary reference to the gesture (graphy, writing) carried out since protohistory and which persists and punctuates the History of cultures created by Man.
Maria Vlandi (born 1952)
Untitled - Unique pieces
Estimate : 600 / 900 €
