Invisible cities

Settlements and ruins, fables and heroes. Hidden mysteries. From antiquity until today the very

same vibration.

Invisible cities belong to the world, every part of the world that keeps alive the memory of past cities. My villages have two faces: one obvious, one hidden. I paint them as I remember them, I purify them from any realistic detail, trying to create a short chromatic summary of each place and reproduce the feeling you get when you see it for the first time. All paintings are based on real places that I ve visited. I will avoid to name them so that the viewer is free to find his own cities behind mine. The ones that remain invisible to me.

Hard mountainous brownBlack of the Stone sea blueyellow. All colours meet, yet they don t mix.

On the contrary, each one can be found pure, bright and issolated.

Placed on this landscape villages and cities seem fragile. I always felt that if I closed my eyes they would disappear, as if they ve never been there, that houses should try hard to stay together, otherwise this chromatic wildness would swallow them. ¶

Everywhere under the ground hidden remnants of ancient buildings. Ancient cities were more than buildings, they were living organisms.

You can sense the experienced time, it s inside you,… you are inside it.

Hard mountainous brownBlack of the Stone sea blueyellow. All colours meet, yet they don t mix.

On the contrary, each one can be found pure, bright and issolated.Placed on this landscape villages and cities seem fragile. I always felt that if I

closed my eyes they would disappear, as if they ve never been there, that houses should try hard to stay together, otherwise this chromatic wildness would swallow them. ¶

Invisible cities belong to the world, every part of the world that keeps alive the memory of past cities. My villages have two faces: one obvious, one hidden. I paint them as I remember them, I purify them from any realistic detail, trying to create a short chromatic summary of each place and reproduce the feeling you get when you see it for the first time. All paintings are based on real places that I ve visited. I will avoid to name them so that the viewer is free to find his own cities behind mine. The ones that remain invisible to me.

Vasiliki Kappa

*All paintings: mixed media on stretched canvas. Most of them are not flat, but have an impressive sculptured texture which can t be shown well enough on digital pictures.

Personal exhibition, Karydis Gallery, Athens, December 2002

100χ120 cm *

50 χ 60 cm *

90χ120 cm *

90x120 cm *

100 χ 150 cm *

90 χ 120 cm *

60 χ 80 cm *

90 χ 120 cm *

90 χ 120 cm *

90χ120 cm *

90 χ 120 cm

60 χ 80 cm *

100χ100 cm *