Unfolding Light

The works of Athena Latinopoulou have a strong and clear presence, they introduce us to their theme directly: coils of rope in magnification, lit up as if by a catalytic floodlight. Pressing his face against the painting, the viewer is lost in their microcosm, as if entering the tangle, and thus the message is no longer limited to the visual dimension, but gradually extends to symbolisms as well.

The painter builds her work methodically upon a solid design, by which she captures the structure, the weave, the constitution of the themes’ substance.

Do Latinopoulou’s works refer us to Reality or to Myth? To the texture of the materials that the artist puts forward as the foreground, highlighting the substance, the geometricity, the constructivist existence?

Curves and squares, sensuality and bonds, side by side in a suggestive confrontation that is subtly conveyed to the viewer.

Looking back on her earlier works, the foreground isn’t always the same, but the ingredients persist and create a timeless coherence and evolution. The ropes are an earlier theme from her boat series, a theme that also conveyed the notion of a woven structure with the sides of the vessel.

Personally, I am glad that an artist gifted with attention to detail, draughtsmanship and maturity in expression, such as Athena Latinopoulou, is putting forward these works, not only well-structured, but also full of tenderness and a powerful optimism.

This is a lyrical realism, based on light and the transduction of the real into the dreamlike, the notional.

Haris Kambouridis
Art critic – Semiologist
Member of Academia Europaea