Composition No 161 Painting

The artist was born in Nicosia, Cyprus (October 1987), where she currently lives and works. She holds a DNAP, (Diplôme National d’Arts Plastiques), from the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Nîmes, as well as a DNAP and a DNSAP, (Diplôme National Supérieur d’Arts Plastiques), from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts de Paris, France, obtained with Distinction. Eleni Pratsi produces artworks with geometric compositions and explosive, liquescent colours. She utilises both painting and printmaking techniques, evoking a balance between creative control and affirmation of chance, which extends throughout all the works. Every composition is created from experimentation with different colour combinations and the infinite possibilities that surface through the repetition, overlap and juxtaposition of circles. The use of stencil, a meticulously cut-out original which meets the canvas, creates sometimes sealed, and other times porous boundaries for the vivid colours that are poured directly on it. The colour palette is influenced by pop culture, developments in pigments and industrial paint production, which Pratsi continually researches. The paint, whose density is specific but different every time, interacts within the in-between space of canvas and stencil in ways that are often surprising. The specifics of gravity, which carries the paint on the painterly surface, play an important part in the creation of colour drips and blocks. Having developed a special relationship to the materiality of painting and the multiplicity of printmaking, Pratsi proposes images that do not impose a fixed meaning but invite the eye to travel within otherworldly landscapes, seen as if from above. The visual and emotional connections one can make, lead to different interpretations of the works. The title of the exhibition, “La Vie en Ronde”, can be interpreted to refer to the “roundness” of life, that feeling of things being mysteriously tied to each other, turning on their own accord, flowing, mixing, and mingling on endless horizons. Evagoras Vanezis Art Theorist