Cobaltite

Eleni Maragaki

SPOTLIGHT / Notable Achievements 2023 / See in the studio

The process of observing is the process of mapping in Eleni Maragaki’s works spanning drawing, sculpture and ink prints. In the prints – of a range of sizes –  of landscapes, interesting interrelations are created between the parts and the whole, between foreground and background. The visual revelation here concerns how the eye makes distinctions through imposing perspectives, which aren’t in fact static, settled, set. Eleni works from her research into Platonic geometries – the regular, elemental shapes that the Greek philosopher sought to establish as basic to the universe.  

The geometric forms in Eleni’s work surpass and encompass us with their simplicity. In the sculptures these forms are poised in their dimensionality. This parallels how in the landscape prints there is an equilibrium between the forms, as decisive, and as in flux. The tension between white marks on a black ink background in the prints adds to the oscillation between the isolation and merging of forms. 

This artist’s project demonstrates an essential energy. As with contemporary American artist Audrey Barcio – whose abstract geometrical works examine where Modernism intersects with the Virtual Industrial age – Eleni Maragaki reaches the universal through the particular, and the real through the virtual.

Director Sarah's take: 
Her style and subject is unlike any other artist we are currently showing. The aerial, analytic viewpoint and reference to ancient printmaking techniques (woodcut blocks) – in addition to the mathematics of space underpinning the organic – fuses into a unique aesthetic. I find Elena's work fascinating. The mystical meets the mathematical. It will be interesting to see how her work evolves over time.