Chryssa Romanos
Solo exhibition
January 17, 2014–February 17, 2014The Breeder, Athens
The Breeder is pleased to present the work of Chryssa Romanos (1931-2006). Romanos, a distinctive Greek artist, quickly established an individualized style which placed her at the forefront of global artistic developments of her time. The exhibition consists of collage and décollage work, all of which are characterized by a critical position on sociopolitical and artistic issues, as well as poetic polysemy.
Chryssa Romanos was born in Athens, where she lived until 1961 and again from 1981 onwards, but the intermediate two decades she spent in France (1961-1981) determined her artistic temperament. There she met her future husband Nikos Kessanlis, as well as various other artistic personas. Romanos was part of the group of Greek diaspora artists who lived and worked in Western art capitals during the post war period. For the first time in recent Greek history, Greek artists would play an instrumental role in the formation of international artistic movements.
The first section of the exhibition features collages from 1965. Chryssa Romanos draws on the techniques of Dadaist collage, the language of mass-culture advertisement, and the written tongue, not to praise, but to mount a critical commentary on capitalist culture.The second section of this exhibition draws from the series Images and Map-Labyrinths, large-scale décollage on plexiglas. Since 1980/81 the artist has worked systematically in this manner. This method, used by the Nouveaux réalistes of the ’60s, was embraced by Chryssa Romanos as the natural successor of previous artistic investigations.
