Athanasia Vidali - Soula's profile

Surfacing abysses

Fine Arts
This work deals with the qualities of desire, and more specifically, with those elements of violence born inside an excessive manifestation of beauty. Enlarged details of corporeal worlds, that seem to infinitely reform, create an uncanny call to labyrinths anatomized with surgical precision, where the repulsive is meant as part of the enchanting. But this work, is also meant as an expression of this long-lasting debate of surface versus depth always following western thought. It is about those elements that produce meaning by concealing it, in a process where the inside-self seems no longer distinct by the social-outside, in what one could call as deleuzian politics of playful osmosis.
 The two media used in this attempt (drawing and caramel sculpture) may seem initially unmatched, but they intend to induce two distinct kinds of critical inquiry on the viewer’s position. The drawings, by their size, technique and theme presented, attempt to allure the viewer's sight, as if to enter this disturbingly attractive world of surfaces, leaving him, nevertheless, the possibility to turn his gaze away, disrupting the relationship with this surfacing image.
With the human-size caramel sculpture, however, the contrasts between the attractive (to taste) and unfamiliar (to form) transcend to different levels, as the participant - in a ritual of crushing and consuming the sculpture - is now called to literally incorporate this alloy of contrasts, creating a violent bond with the work as well as with the rest of the attendants, ultimately opening the dialogue from the field of the subjective to potential thoughts in relation to a being-with-others.
Surfacing Abysses, colored pencil on cotton paper, 140 x 190 cm, 2012.
Surfacing Abysses, detail
Surfacing Abysses, detail.
Noli me non-tangere, colored pencil on cotton paper, 140 x 190 cm, 2012.
Noli me non-tangere, detail.
View of the exhibition
Caramel sculpture, detail.
Caramel sculpture, detail 2.
Caramel sculpture, partial view.
Snapshot of the happening: devouring the caramel skin.
crushed caramel


Surfacing abysses
Published:

Surfacing abysses

This is the work I presented for my graduation from the Athens' School of Fine Arts Master Program in July 2012. It consists of two big drawings Read More

Published: