DIMITRA BARBA
I Love You Love Me Love
12 January – 17 February 2001
Els Hanappe Underground
DIMITRA BARBA I Love You Love Me Love
Opening night on Thursday, 11 January 2001 from 8 – 11 p.m.
Exhibition from 12 January – 17 February 2001
Els Hanappe Underground is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition ‘I Love You Love Me Love by Dimitra Barba.
In 1999, Dimitra Barba started borrowing the imagery and aesthetic style of seventies girlie magazines, using their graphic and decorative elements as the basis for her ink on paper drawings. Singling out pictures, casting herself in the role of the tragic heroine, paraphrasing hollow expressions, allowed the artist to penetrate the state of mind of that era.
In this exhibition – the artist’s first solo-show both in Greece and abroad - Dimitra Barba takes the viewer a step further by analyzing and breaking up similar pictures and creating autonomous images from their individual parts: figures set against a neutral backdrop, the original background as a separate decorative décor, phrases floating in space, patterns turned into abstract drawings.
Once its narrative flow has been interrupted and uplifted, a period – the infamous seventies – gets exposed, characterized as if it were only by design. But what at first seem shallow and superficial surfaces, hide deeper meanings and feelings that refer to the psychology of a whole generation.
Els Hanappe Underground, gallery for contemporary art, Melanthiou 2, Psyrri, Greece
