Bernier/Eliades Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition Brittle Connections, by Lillian Lykiardopoulou, on Thursday April 6th, 2023, 18:00 – 21:00.
Lillian Lykiardopoulou is a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Art, with an MFA from Yale University. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Italy and South Korea. This is the artist’s second solo show in Athens and her first with Bernier/Eliades Gallery.
In Brittle Connections the artist will present two interconnected collections: a series of wall-mounted ceramic sculptures and a series of site-specific sculptures in colored clay and porcelain.
Lykiardopoulou’s works are the results of her exploration of both her materials (clay, glazes, and pigments), and her subject matter, which she draws from the urban landscape and her personal life. This series evidences her evolution from the conceptual (Loop Ahead) into a more material-based practice, through a more sensual processing of her ideas into form, without the final works losing the humour and sense of the absurd of her earlier, more conceptual work.
According to the artist, the new exhibition is divided this into three thematic groups with different starting points.
“The first series began when I started noticing the orange safety netting used in the streets of Athens around construction sites. I saw these road works and the materials around them as open – supposedly temporary – wounds in the urban environment, that nonetheless seem to remain permanently open, raw and exposed. I made a series of grids in different sizes with various geometric shapes, using the specific orange colour to denominate this liminal state.
The second set began whilst I observed elements in the city and was drawn to pipes in front of apartment buildings (often in pairs) used to ventilate basements. I started a series of projects inspired by the forms of these objects that connect the underground and over-ground worlds. Using clay and porcelain, I started exploring their forms and discovered their underlying organic function, then often placing them in interaction with each other.
The third group of works explore our need for both protection and vulnerability, that in this series seems to crystalize around passive-aggressive objects: animals with scales, exoskeletal insect shells, claws, cuticles, i.e. something hard protecting something soft and fleshy.”