THE SOLO exhibition of works by Maria Vyrra at artzone42, entitled ‘Ninemia’ (Stillness), presents this artist’s paintings created between 2020 and 2022. These works take expressionism to a new contemporary vista, with its world of colour, emotion and bold brushwork, but Vyrra combines expressionism with her own unique painting techniques, in this way forging her own particular style. Her works reflect on the fluidity of current life and often have an otherworldly dimension to them. The exhibition runs till November 25.

For this section, the artist attempts to explore the fluidity of the environment and the deconstructed form, whether it is a human body or elements that seem to have an organic existence in the painting environment. The spaces often give off an atmospheric, almost “hypnotic” feeling. The central theme of the works is the human and the emotional charge that the image may manifest, the interaction with the quiet space and how the limits of the balance between them are achieved. That is, the intervention of the human stigma in places that in themselves seem ideal and sufficient to us.

Art Historian George Mylonas notes about Maria Vyrra:

“A painter who carries the tradition of expressionism with a contemporary character that makes her an illustrator of our time. A painter whose gaze goes beyond ours, back to the years when we gave shape to the clouds and color to the sea.

She is concerned with rendering the space free from all the objects that usually fill it, from all the horizons that define it – an abstract space where color flows claiming its own existence in space. Vyrra creates forms on the border of figurative painting. Women who glorify and at the same time mourn the body, painful, blooming, a place of mystical intoxication and at the same time a field of decay and a shell of imperfection that the artist emphatically emphasizes with erasures or color overlays”.

Maria Vyrra was born in Athens in 1984. In 2013 she graduated from the Athens School of Fine Arts with a degree in Painting (Professors Michalis Manousakis and Panos Charalambous), while she studied Sculpture with professors Nikos Tranos – Theodoros Papagiannis and Scenography with Lily Pezanou . She initially studied at the Civil Engineering Department of the University of West Attica. She has participated in many group exhibitions, while her works are in public and private collections. She lives and works in Athens.

• The exhibition ‘Ninemia’ runs till November 25 at artzone42 gallery (42 Vasileos Konstantinou St, Athens 11635). Open Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 15:00 – 21:00, Wednesday, Saturday 11:00 – 15:00. Tel: 210 7259549

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