Christina Petrinou at www.lab71.org

Eleni Kamma has embarked on her first person exhibition at Vamiali’s gallery in Athens with a presentation which is exceptional both from the point of view of the selection of works and that of its presentation.

Her works have the merit of drawing. On semi-transparent paper, ordinary rice paper, the artist copies in black and coloured inks architectural designs from Lego houses to the Renaissance illustration of the manuscripts of the manuscripts of the Roman architect Vitruvius by Fra Giovanni Giocondo da Verona. By very simply mixing together low and high cultural features of architecture, Kamma combines these with complex decorative motifs which are derived, among other sources, from wallpapers of the ‘70s which adorned the interior of houses.

Her spaces do not resemble empty frameworks since baroque decorative features subvert their construction. It is interesting to look at the strange use of these images, which result from this architectural elimination. In spite of the care which artist takes over a precise clarity in no way descriptive, her works revolve around thinking of the problems of the disappearance of space through a blinding limpidity, which overturns its structure. These are uninhabitable spaces, which are projected like fantasy dwellings that have lost their tenants.

Faced with such sensitively constructed works, how is one not to think that something has collapsed? This is architecture purely of portraiture. The result in terms of design is enchanting in its extreme. Kamma’s intervention lies in the selection of ready-made images that she re-makes by composing them, with ready-made models always as a point of reference. Her capabilities in making combinations rival the logic of jigsaw puzzles and Lego games. In a very persuasive way, Kamma combines pre-existing forms, images and extracts from multifarious references in a hypochondriac abstraction. Her references are incorporated into, adapted to the new arrangement that the artist ascribes to them.

One has to tour these works of drawing in their maze of construction without having any specific plan, even if they are architectural designs. A descriptive order predominates in her works that is subverted by the aesthetic interventions of the painter. No description seems to close any door, but leaves open all interpretations. The incompleteness is not focused in the work, but in the approachable character of the works. In writing about Kamma’s work, the risk has to be taken of discovering an archaeological method rather than analyzing it. In essence, it is an oeuvre minimally narrative. We have to trace those areas which themselves in their turn bear traces. Her works have the character of a house, which we must go through notionally, the difference here being that our passage through it requires a constant reversal of our way of looking because nothing is where we expect it. Architectural fragments are scattered to build something else and to create new relocations.

In her works, their drawing emerges progressively through a labyrinthine void. The feeling of transparency is like a crack in a mirror. About her work, she herself says, “Through my drawings I examine the probabilities of utopian, idealistic spaces ranging from the suspended to the chaotic which are created by a strange collage of forms and arise from different pre-existent and given ideologies and stereotypes. I like tracing paper chiefly because it is exceptionally light and has the property of the chameleon to adapt itself accordingly. The manner in which the image is reproduced on it is also the reason for its existence.”

Through Kamma’s notional houses, the beholder is introduced into an extremely dream-like intoxicating enjoyment, which resembles the hours in which you think about, daydream about your idealistic residence.