CYPHER presents the first solo exhibition of Eleni Tomadaki, titled “Aaaaa,aa”, curated by Ioanna Gerakidi. Rooted in the primitive and instinctive yet tender gesture of the stroke, Tomadaki’s new body of work oscillates between chaos and hesitation, destruction and creation. Through her recent patterns— once figurative, currently broken, faded or willfully fainted—the artist questions the boundaries of form and existence. By occupying a space which lingers over the real and the speculative, the haptic and the dreamy, the exhibition “Aaaaa,aa” interprets breath as an alternative vocabulary and order as something ever-changing, inviting the audience to explore their own meanings, spiralities, and freedoms.
The opening will take place on Friday, January 17, at 7pm.
Curatorial Text
A few weeks back, in a note she wrote as a response to her practice or praxes on and nearby painting, Eleni Tomadaki says that: “Each stroke signifies decisions which reply to questions. Questions concerning the medium, the limits of the medium, the limits of the self.” I read it and I remember I was left thinking: Why a stroke? Who’s historically named this often rough and abrupt and unmeasured gesture a stroke? How can a movement almost instinctive or primitive be seen or uttered as something as tender and motherly and loving?
Yet, in this new body of work bringing together a series of paintings and other works, words and sounds, Tomadaki enacts the essence of the “stroke”. There’s something in her recent patterns, once figurative, currently broken, faded or willfully fainted, sharpened and darkened and paused, that was born through and by touch.
And through this exact touch, its pains or pleasures or both, she navigates us through her questions on limit. Her touch traces the idea or the connotations of that feared and fearless line in multiple and vexed ways. Her works speaks of hesitation and chaos, they grasp the gasp, follow the chasm, intensify when shielded, show and shine when safe. The limits of her medium extend following the rhythms of her self. The bodily gesture turns into a promise, a fractured yet performative engagement with a series of
subversions and other schemes seemingly contradictory.
In this new body of work presented in her solo show “Aaaaa,aa”, Tomadaki creates a world, an omniverse where she can compulsively destroy what was once delimited or bounded, only to let it grow. And within such a process, she resists time and exceeds space; she fails the image as a whole, obeys to the impositions of her ruins. She gets lost and stubbornly occupies this space in between the real and the speculative, the haptic and the dreamy.
Vernaculars and screams and whispers, urban and other landscapes, diaristic elements, spirits, animals and woods and wounds, birds and their voices in high-pitched volumes, they all co-exist in her work. Nothing’s too frivolous to be excluded, nothing’s too precious to be praised either. Relics and dirty wipes, pinks and blacks, spiderwebs or the spectrum of light, the tensions between them all, non-defined and peripheral, form what will be brought to the center of attention.
In “Aaaaa,aa” breaths are intrinsic parts of an alternative vocabulary, supporting mechanisms are vessels for resisting the body’s restraints and images escape the structure of an internal or external depiction, allowing us audiences to become with our meanings, spiralities, freedoms. And over this constantly alternating or fighting states between the tamed and the disruptive, things find another order, a limitless, unending point where the lyrical exist only through the breaks of cacophony.
Eleni Tomadaki is a visual artist based in Athens. She graduated from the Royal College of Art (London, 2019) and has been awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Fellowship by ARTWORKS (Greece, 2021). She was one of the 30 finalists of CIRCA prize 2024, her work being screened at Piccadilly Lights screen, Piccadilly Circus (London, 2024). She was a resident artist at the Mountain School of Arts, run by Piero Golia (LA, 2023). She has shown work in art spaces and institutions worldwide, such as ICA London, Tate St Ives, Gasworks London, South London Gallery, Horse and Pony Berlin, the Institute of Fine Arts Toulouse, Uppsala Konst Museum, The Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, the Oscar-qualifying Cinanima International Animation Festival. Group exhibitions in Greece that he has recently participated in include Touching Faultlines curated by Panos Giannikopoulos & Angeliki Tzortzakaki at Gortynas Ancient Theatre, (Crete, 2024), and Outraged By Pleasure curated by Nadja Argyropoulou at Nobel building (Athens 2024).
CYPHER is an independent gallery founded in 2024 by Isavella Kladaki, dedicated to the exploration of contemporary art through the promotion of emerging artists.
“Aaaaa,aa”, Eleni Tomadaki’s solo show at CYPHER
curated by Ioanna Gerakidi
17.01 – 28.02.2025
Opening:
17.01.2025, 19:00-22:00
Live act Eleni & Jeph Vanger, 20:00
Opening hours:
Thu-Fri 18:00-21:00, Sat-Sun 12:00-16:00, and by appointment
CYPHER – Lefkados 1, Kypseli, Athens
cypherathens.com
*Ioanna Gerakidi is SNF ARTWORKS Curatorial Fellow (2021) and Eleni Tomadaki SNF ARTWORKS Visual Arts Fellow (2021)