"An erotic act! Love is, in any case, very similar to making love, when it comes to the extasy in which we are and feel about the other person, or the Other, namely the painting in front of our eyes! This intensity of desire in painting, pops off really suddenly, out of cracks on the walls of contradictions, out of smudges, plot twists, corrections and repetitions“ This is what Irini wrote in a note she just handed off to me during our first interview about the Exhibition Mare Mineralis. This „marginal“ paralellism, however, moved from the „margins“ of this column to the main title of an article published in the weekly To Vima tis Kyriakis, on the 8th of March 2015: „Painting is like making love“ ....
This title was the only one capable of putting into words the sense that kept on conquering me, as long as I was in Irini‘s workshop, a sense that, in that place, a constant act of love with painting was being accomplished. Of course, I was totally unaware of the fact that, beside me, in all the secret and confidential sketchblocks of 2014, there were some love paintings. Later on, when I managed to gain her confidence, I became one of the very few initiated to Irini‘s erotic paintings. And then, I remained pending between two very strong challenges facing my gender and my aesthetics. Which one was stronger? My nature or Painting itself?
The initial drawings were sketched with a pencil. There, the erotic intensity was clearly expressed, through the power of the lines, allowing nature to impose itself to painting. Irini never believed that painting was innocent. And she believed it even less about these drawings. What she wanted was to inject more Art in them. This is the reason why, as she often does, she made them subjects to the primal catharsis of the diluvium. For her, painting is an adventure in progress. The good thing appearing at first glance on the surface of a canvas tempts us to enter the adventure of the better thing. The creator hides in the deep waters overwhelming the artwork and is eager to come out in order to become a part of the composition. She is not afraid to sacrifice minor certainties, in favour of the new things to come. And they do come. Always.
Jean-Paul Sartre reminded us that there´s no other kind of love than the one which is constructed and fullfilled. There is no latent, but only obvious, expressed love. As watercolours are running on the drawing, they unify the bodies, cover all the eloquent details with a promising, colorful cloud and, turning the realism of the lines into atmosphere. The drawings which have been coloured in 2017 and 2018 are full of familiarity and passion, remaining „obscene“ (ie. Honest) and provocative for the body, the mind and the soul. Therefore, exhibiting them may seem daring, but for the ones who know her well, they are a natural expression of her character. Because Irini, in Art and in life, listens carfully to the canvas, as well as to her revolutionary and daring nature, telling her that there is no sense in keeping on doing only what we know well.
Νikos G. Mastropavlos. Columnist