Made by Loula in Gr

2016 – Art gallery Ekfrasi – gianna grammatopoulou, Athens ,Greece
A few words about Loula
by Maria Maragou
Critic, Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Crete. 

The girl next door is a hipster; hysterically so. She would always identify with an era and exhaust it, in a kind of dressing up accompanied by rituals which she recorded on film or photos.
On her own or with a group, dressing this or that way; a pose, a situation so that they can have a chat between them — she with herself, that is. The associations with other heroines of painting create their own new landscapes, at times subverting the succession of past and present.
The years went by, the crisis came and wrecked everything, her concerns found some answers or went into deeper waters; and here she is, Loula, a petite-bourgeois, middle-class, formerly upper class person, contemplative, rock, looking into the wardrobe and bringing out her everyday clothes. It is these that she wishes to stage.
Of course it is the image of the body she is dealing with again. It is the body itself that will be exhausted, negated, used; that will change form, be converted. You see, the present’s umbilical cord is always in the past, especially for artists.
A garment represents its wearer. It is a detail that makes the difference in a world that’s homogeneous and always on the move, by plane or on the web, drinking coffee, putting things or the vacuum in order or in disorder, twisting or distorting the everyday reality to make it more bearable, suffering from depression and insomnia. A Loula we know, our own Loula, under pressure, terrified by the sight of bills and by the burden of an art with which something must be done, since it won’t be made to disappear.
Every garment conjures up its own story. A good meeting, a conversation, those nice apples at the open market, the Brad Pitt film, the reading of the life of Epicure, the encounter with the work of El Anatsui, the great existential crisis before the Greek crisis, why others can have an international career and Loula can’t. Amidst all this there is that old shirt that surfaces, linked to the question of the viewers’ role, their participation and the limits of their power over the course of the artist’s work.
When the clothes are not enough, Loula paints those huge forms that oppress her, although she exorcises them with slogans and titles. How nice. Ink is the fastest and most transparent material before painting on the computer.
In terms of the art scene, these shenanigans belong in a contemporary neo-pop setting with a good dose of surrealism, just like our bizarre Greek situation.
Spyridoula Politi is a serious person in terms of her relation with art. The visual essays on her persona of Loula suffocate, entertain and nurture us.