Efi Manou

Solo Exhibition April 2025

Gallery Chryssothemis invites you to the solo painting exhibition

of Efi Manou

“Positions and oppositions”

Opening:

Friday 4 April 2025, 18:00-22:00
Saturday 5 April 2025, 12:00-17:00

Open to the public until Saturday the 3rd of May 2025

Material yet transcendent, the visual world of Efi Manou walks a fine line between positions and oppositions. It navigates the signifier of the image and the signified of its content, the representational captured by visual experience and its imaginative extensions. It juxtaposes "good" and "evil," which, as fundamental philosophical concepts, align with beauty and truth, brutality and illusion, respectively.

At its core lies humanity, an archetype that reflects the universe's moral essence, sustained by an eternal electromagnetic duality in the spacetime continuum—the equivalence between matter and energy.

Within this dichotomy, the artist perceives the human form as dual in nature, shaped by its two coexisting yet conflicting essences. These are the physical, which is grasped through external stimuli and depicted with precise plasticity devoid of textures on the canvas, and the eternal, emerging from the existential anxiety in the gaze, seen as a window to the unknown.

The gaze reveals a mystical omnipotence, forming a union of time embodied in realistically narrated forms and timelessness conveyed through eyes that, as in supplication, transcend. Matter carries certainty but is burdened with mortality, while the intangible harbors doubt yet offers the prospect of immortality as its counterweight. Full-bodied, statue-like figures with pronounced musculature appear in unadulterated nudity, free of erotic undertones, set against indeterminate depths reminiscent of the golden fields of Byzantine art, uniting a specific moment with eternity.

These figures are portrayed either alone, speaking despite their cold silence, or in pairs, always subjected to their shared destiny, akin to heraldic guardians of the Gates of Paradise. They do not interact. The fall from paradisiacal bliss is suggested by apples—a motif honoring Magritte and the great master Ilias Dekoulakos—recurrent as a visual symbol of original sin, while simultaneously hinting at hope for redemption.

Deliberately, Efi Manou incorporates abstract works within this thematic unit, contrasting sensation with hallucination, presence with absence. Linear, chromatic, or vegetal motifs are sketched dynamically, with gestural brushstrokes and pigment drippings, encapsulating the artist's personal visions and narratives. The sensory unity of time and space is fragmented like an illusion, always functioning, despite its apparent "randomness," with an intrinsic logic stemming from "an inner necessity," as Pollock once said.

Ultimately, the aim of Manou's body of work is not the formal autonomy of her compositions through conventional schematization of the known but rather the visualization of a prima idea. This vibrantly emerges from her brush, proposing through a strictly binary framework of commonalities and differences a third dimension of the world. This dimension defines every self-sufficient entity, compelled on this thorny path toward salvation to individually explore the perceptual and semiotic dimensions of physical reality. The goal is to compose a personal narrative, culminating in an intriguing micro-story to share.

True to her own spirit...

Evangelia Th. Kairaki
MA in Art History, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA)
Member of the Association of Greek Art Historians (EEIT)

Efi Manou

Born in Athens, 1958.

She initially studied at the Pedagogical Academy (1975-1977) and at the School of Kindergarten Teachers (1977-1978). She continued with studies in painting at Athens School of Fine Arts (1980-1985) near D. Mytaras and I. Dekoulakos, engraving near Th. Exarchopoulos and scenography with professor Mr. V. Vassiliadis. She also studied at the Royal College of Arts in London with professor Peter de Francia and at the New York Academy with professors L. Gervitz, -Repin process- and John Wellington.

She has held group and solo exhibitions in Greece (Athens, Syros, Ioannina, Heraklion, Loutraki, etc.), but also abroad (Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Spain, Yugoslavia, New York, etc.). Her works are in public and private collections.

At the same time, she has dealt with the illustration of children's books (The truest fairy tale - Kedros Chr. Kassari Publications, Cards of first reading), the scenography, but also with translations (Van Gogh, Gauguin, Watercolor, Impressionism, Perspective and A portrait of Giacometti - Smili editions).