The new hydrophilic painting of Irini Iliopoulou appears to have come from very far away. Before History, from a mythical age when the Homeric universe was encircled by an endless ocean. After History, from the Age of Reason, when the Earth like a raft wandered aimlessly over the water. This is what he said to us the wise Thales from Miletus of Asia Minor who was open to the great civilizations of the East and to traveling and whose word made the minds of men change course from myth to reason. He told us that undoubtedly everything was born of water and very probably he told us that everything is water. If in fact Thales truly did say the latter, that everything is water, he does indeed deserve the title that Aristotle bestowed upon him: “leader of philosophers,” the first to perform that miracle of the ancient and contemporary world which is ancient Greek philosophy – the most important and liveliest of world cultural heritage monuments.
Ancient Greek philosophy never lost its truth or its relevance, not even its primordial questionings such as is water the principal element of the universe. And today there are creators who attempt to answer with their art and their sensibility. Like Irini Iliopoulou who with her new series of paintings gives us the clear response – yes, everything is water – and in so doing becomes one of the leaders of the painters of our era who reserve an extensive and generative role in their works for water. Attention! It is not the presence of water that contains everything, but its omnipotence.
The liquid element, both fresh water and deep water, is the cohesive material that builds the artist’s new paintings. Everything is infiltrated from one end to the other with lifegiving interventions. It is not one of the features of the composition, or even the dominant one but rather that which infuses meaning into all the others. It gives them everything – from their complex character, for instance fluidity, to the play of their own reflections. The world of the painter is aquatic: inundated by visible and invisible water. Everything floats or surfaces. The fragmented figures of trunk, the ramblings of ivy, water lilies, Irises, cows, even people’s stories like that of the leather bag or that of children swimming.
The forest that occupies the largest surface of the works is naturally tropical, rain, dense, without glades. Like nature, the painter abhors a vacuum. She always tries to fill the gaps. And this generates parallel stories within her works, a complexity of meanings and techniques. This time wetness is complexity. Otherwise, for the painter each new work is a wager. Elsewhere, she said that it makes no sense to do something that you already know how to fabricate well. Always in the search for the new, there is the challenge of chance and surprise. The painter calls upon and provokes these forces technically with water as such submerging and flooding works that she had already given an initial form to. New forms, fresh ideas, novel creations emerge from the water. Water creates everything, everything is water…
Nikos Mastropavlos, Journalist