Eleni Psyllaki

Eleni Psyllaki (b. 1981, Greece) was originally trained as an architect and her art practice is informed by her background in architecture and design. Her paintings and works on paper are characterized by linear sketching, straight lines, scaling, and, above all, a love for symmetry. Her works’ strict geometry and precision are a continuation of the free sketching one comes across in architectural drawings. Her color palette is infused with balanced earthly tones inspired by her native Crete. In her paintings, we can discern the beige of stone, the brown of tree trunks, the khaki of olives, and the golden yellow of summer cobs.

Her forms, on the other hand, are strict and minimal and rooted in abstraction, where any surplus information or detail is eliminated, infusing the works with a doric quality. In this way, Psyllaki likes to draw attention to the form’s contours, hard edges, and pure tonality.

Various representations of historical and imaginary vessels populate her paintings and works on paper. Despite their descriptive outline, forms are seen as flat spaces that can encompass meaning. Here, the artist plays with the form of the vessel and what it encapsulates, as well as with the notion of the void and what it enfolds, be that wine like in ancient Greece or an idea and emotion. Psyllaki's vessels always have an entrance and an exit, with the bottom side left open-ended, acting as a metaphor for the union between the divine and the terrestrial.