DESPOINA KONSTANTINOY

Description

Release

Painting, oil on canvas

Cacti are the new subject of Despina Konstantinou’s painting – a subject that is charged with the obvious importance it attaches to it and the skillful way it processes it with bright colors, purity, detailed design and special care in rendering different textures, recalling, initially, the, with exceptional recording accuracy and elegance, color lithographs with the theme of plants and flowers that illustrated natural history editions in the 19th century. By combining various real species, he creates new, fantastic species-mutant cactus hybrids, which monumentally occupy the painted surface, submitting a highly dreamy and metaphysical atmosphere where, with intensity and surreal, often playful and subversive, erotic element emerges, erotic element . With references to the poem The Loves of the Plants by the English philosopher, poet and naturalist Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), the compositions of Despina Konstantinou introduce us to a peculiar, colorful and lively, plant world, in direct correspondence and superimposition with the human, where sexuality plays the leading role. The cacti are transformed into phallic and pubic symbols, the combinations and encounters between them come to convey the impression of direct physical experience and carnal contact, to critically approach the stereotypical rivalry of the two sexes, to open themselves to the areas of hermaphroditism, bisexuality and bisexuality. , to capture relations of power and power, manipulation, domination and submission, to allegorically contrast the flooded juices inside their hard and thorny shell, to convey the momentum of desire, sensuality and lust of union, to visualize the feelings of and pleasure, violence and pleasure. The black color, enhanced with silver glitter, defines the surrounding space, referring to the universe, the cosmic void, the birth, the mystery of the beginning of creation.
Giannis Bolis
Art historian

DESPOINA KONSTANTINOU

He was born in Serres, lives and works in Thessaloniki.

He studied painting at the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with professors G. Tsakiris and K. Mortarakos. (2003-2008)

She has presented her work to date in six solo exhibitions:
2020 Balkan Art Gallery / Conserva, Xanthi.
2018 “Flowers and Thorns”, Astrolavos Dexameni Gallery, Kolonaki, Athens.
2016 Cube Gallery, Patras, “Bitten”
2012 CK Art Gallery, Nicosia, Cyprus.
2012 “prinTemps”, Astrolavos Dexameni Gallery, Kolonaki, Athens.
2011 “Woman”, Papatzikou Gallery, Veria.

Two or three man show
2018 Gallery Papatzikou, Veria.
Ochra Blue Gallery, Lemnos.

He has also participated in numerous exhibitions in Greece and abroad.
Her works are in private collections in Greece and abroad.