Georges Bataille wrote in 1927: “I defy any art lover to love a canvas as much as a fetishist loves a shoe”. I saw at the Stigma Gallery an excellent exhibition which, I fear, did not get the attention it deserved. Maria Christea makes a spectacular debut in the field of video art with her “Incessant Courses”, presenting a cinematically and stylistically impeccable work-environment and giving those who are seen as masters of the genre in this country a run for their money. Conception, narration, image flow, montage, climax – everything contributes to an impressive combination of painterly approach and cinematic expression. Even the video’s fiction, unusual and somewhat melodramatic, was articulated with cinematic knowledge.
In the “Asymmetric Circles” Christea guided her actors along a ‘Mediterranean Bergman-esque’ atmosphere and arrived at a highly aesthetic result in a genre which is “mixed yet legitimate”. Also impressive was “City”, a photo composition of a distorted urban landscape and the equally distorted lives within it, as well as “Incessant Course”, a video that references Carlos Saura and his Blood Wedding.
Throughout her career from her first show at the Athens Art Gallery (1987) to the work she presented recently at the Creonides gallery, Christea examines the ontological problem of the figure as a unit of communication and the way it fits into space: how it arises, why it exists, what forces make it up. Therefore, the evolutionary course from the painted relief to three-dimensional constructions with light as the ‘body’ and shade as the ‘soul’ and then to the moving as well as self-disciplined image is perfectly legitimate. Still, the most impressive aspect of her work is the variety of expression, its deeply emotive character and the way the media are made to serve the dominant concept. The disjointed nature of her images—fragmented relationships, betrayed emotions, confused genders—often has the effect of a suddenly stopped musical continuum; the sound, although no longer heard, continues to exist and reverberate in the space. In the art of Christea, despite the tightly controlled media, there is something of a philological charge which may result from her need to speak through symbols (Cycle of Life, House, Incessant Course). Nevertheless, the dynamic of her images is convincing enough to offset any such tension.