March 2008
Mato Ioannidou
It becames more and more rare to meet artists who begin painting based on the certainty that paradise exists. And Mato Ioannidou is one of them. Here, in these works that she created with such an eagerness and assiduity things are clear. God is mourning, man is hearting and life, by way of a usurer, collects the energy it needs, by lending comforting pleasure. The only hope of deliverance is the faith that the Garden of Eden once existed. Therefore (how could it be otherwise) we can find it again. If not this stand, however, what else is true art, the one that is worth bearing that name? What else but this certainty, which you don’t have to prove to anyone? A word to the wise is sufficient, as well as a word to who is able to make associations.March 2008
Kostas Kartelias
A remarkable presence in today’s art world is Mato Ioannidou’s painting exhibition at Adam Gallery. The presented thematic unit is dedicated to associative representations of Saint-George. The triggering occasion was Maria Topali’s poem «Dream in a azure background» (Ενύπνιον σε γαλάζιο φόντο), in which it is said: «I Saint George, shall free the allbeautifull-one / whom I hold captive in my guts/I the Dragon». As the artist notes in the exhibition catalogue «I started painting repeating to myself the verse. From 2003 up to now, the verse never stopped generating new images, always associated with my recent experiences : on the one hand, my encounter with frescos in churches and country chapels all over Greece, which had once again confirmed my deep faith in painting; on the other hand, my visit in Olympos of Karpathos. Olympos is for me an example of survival and living testimony of a civilization with very deep roots, and at the same time a mould of archetypal figures. The last paintings of this work associate Saint George with the snake and Adam, the allbeatiful with Eve and the Virgin Mary, just as the icon-stands adorned by the women of Olympos do it».
Νikos Langadinos