Kalfayan Galleries present the solo exhibition of Karolina Krasouli titled ‘Wish’. The opening will take place on Thursday, 23 March 2023 (18.00 – 21.00).

Karolina Krasoulis' exhibition at Kalfayan galleries continues the artist's research on the representation of visual phenomena, which are connected to the mechanisms of memory and language.

The viewer is invited to decipher the 'wish' expressed by each work that balances between the concept of hope and unrealized hope, desire and sense of dissatisfaction, between the present and the future, the real and the metaphysical. Krasouli's 'wishes' sometimes take the form of drawings with colored pencils on paper, while in other cases they are expressed through stitched canvases. The latter are the result of a long process in which the artist prepares the canvas, creates the colors, paints the canvas with oil and gesso, and then artfully stitches it, concealing the seams. The artist ‘molds’ the canvas into shapes that refer to, for example, folded pages of paper, books or envelopes. Her new works capture the multi-layered symbolism of a 'wish', and at the same time are 'open' to interpretation. Roland Barthes in his 'Theory of Texts' considers the text as a constant ‘weaving’ process. Every text is a weaving of earlier references. This 'intertextuality' can also be found in Krasouli's works. In the canvas-works it is expressed through their multilayered format. Krasouli treats and 'folds' the canvas like paper, and then adds elements of writing.

The starting point of the gestural process of writing is the inspiration that Krasouli draws from literature, and more specifically, from poetry, autobiography and literary nonfiction. Sewing, painting, draping of the canvas, patterned motifs and spatial mapping on paper are all contemplative processes.

Through the open-to-interpretation form of the works on canvas and especially through the repetition of motifs and the seriality of the drawings on paper, Krasouli attempts in a way to annihilate the distance between the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified ‘and to abolish any hierarchy of the individual elements of the works. At the same time, in the new body of work presented at Kalfayan Galleries, the artist addresses the potentially elliptical nature of communication and message transmission. How can the gesture of concealment coexist with the gesture of disclosure, how can author and addressee be the same person, how can a fragment indicate the presence of omissions? The works invoke what Karolina Krasouli calls "decentralized writing" a form of writing on whatever is nearby. Through a process of reading and writing, the artist uncovers a set of mechanisms where meanings and sensations are "rewritten" with the aim to invent a new language between abstraction and representation.

Short biography:

Karolina Krasouli (1984) is a visual artist based in Athens. Following her studies in Clinical Psychology (Greece and France), she obtained a Master’s in Fine Arts at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts Lyon, in 2014. Whether in painting, photography, or film, her works explore the intersection of abstraction and figuration. Through a process of reading and writing, she extracts a set of operations for ‘rewriting’ meanings and sensations, seeking to invent a novel language. In 2015, she co-founded Alfabeto, a group for theoretical and practical research on the concept of transmission in art; Alfabeto organised a series of lectures and exhibitions at the French Academy in Rome. The same year, she was awarded a two-year fellowship for a residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris. In 2019 she was a fellow of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s Artist Fellowship Program, Artworks. From January to March 2022, she was artist in residence at the Delfina Foundation in London. She has participated in various exhibitions in Greece and abroad, like Aaahhh!!!Paris Internationale, with Grey Noise Dubai (Paris, 2022); Doomed Companions Unsubstantial Shades (NEON, Embassy of Greece in London, 2022); Phenomenon 4, (Phenomenon Association and Kerenidis Pepe Collection, Anafi, 2022); Details of love (SECCMA trade, Seccma Trust, 2022); Deep End (Two thirds art project space, Athens 2022); Cc, (Callhirrhöe, Athens, 2021); 21!New Painting, (Archaeological museum of Agios Nikolaos, Crete 2021); Promise (solo exhibition at the City of Athens Arts Centre, Parko Eleftherias, 2021); Mines and Minerals (Mega Livadi Serifos, 2021); Unhappy Monuments (Eleftherias Park, Athens, 2020); Bring me the sunset in a cup (solo exhibition, La vitrine, Frac île de France, le plateau, Paris, 2020); Some fortune cookies contain no fortune (sound work, Gabriella, 3 137, Athens, 2019); Curved Arrows (Daily Lazy et Kunstraum am Schauplatz, Vienna, 2019); Collection. La composante Peintures (museum collection exhibition, Frac Bretagne, Rennes, 2019); L’Incompatible Vugo (Pauline Perplexe, Paris 2018); Stopping Point (Daily Lazy, Athens, 2018); Sens dedans dehors (galerie Nicolas Sillin, Paris, 2017); Raw Material (galerie Eva Meyer, Paris, 2017); A thousand hours (solo exhibition, Galerie Raymond Hains, Saint-Brieuc, 2016), Incorporated! (Biennale de Rennes, 2016); L’inconnue de la Seine (La Tôlerie, Clermont-Ferrand, 2016); 60e Salon de Montrouge (Paris, 2015); L’Analfabeto (Villa Medici, 2015); Les Enfants du Sabbat (Le Creux de l’Enfer, Thiers, 2015).