Lina Pigadioti-Tzima (b. Athens 1967) studied at Parsons School of Art & Design in Paris (BFA, 1991) and Central Saint Martins College of Arts & Design in London (1990). In 2013 she completed a Contemporary Art course at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in New York. And in 2014 she has the pleasure of participating in a Printmaking Master Class at Columbia University (School of Visual Arts), New York. Having worked for 18 years in the publishing business, since 2008 she has devoted herself to art. She travels extensively for inspiration, taking pictures, writing and collecting objects and memories. She then creates a series of works of art which combine painting, etching, collages and photography in a very personal way.
Her work seeks to visualize the impact of time. It depicts images of fthora (wear and tear, decay) and, through varied ways, means and techniques, recounts the feeling of spoilage that time leaves on matter. Lettering and random incidences complete the “syllabus” of her communication bible.
Lina lives and works in Athens, Greece. Works of hers are shown in the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, and in private collections in Greece and abroad.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
… my whole life I’ve been consciously recording images … images of everyday life … places … expressions … moments
… thus time … and if I was asked to give one word to delineate time it would be “fthora” … a beautiful Greek word for decay … wear … attrition … spoilage … dilapidation … all very updated issues … and yet closely linked with the past … to the history of things
… to me fthora is the evidence of time on materials … as well as humans and meanings! … the one on materials, though, can easily be testified … and we can be moved by the beauty of it … materials in layers is what I am dealing with in my paintings, as well … and those materials need to have texture, body and variety to be part of it … in a way fthora is the nature’s “painting” that happens by chance … and I am there to ascribe it
… they say that “chance” may sometimes be God working incognito … so I believe that … and remain open to this intervention…
… writing and scripture, always played and still do, a very important role in my work … asemic writing came to host my lust for a “meaningful” writing … an illegible writing open to the viewer’s personal interpretation … and that is what I stand for … I photograph … I print … I draw … I construct … I write … feeling totally given to a feverish experimentation
… I filter the world through my soul searches and transform my dreams and passions to a visible reality … through the magic of movement which records the light, the form the deeper structure of things
… the absence of body is replaced by the delight of gesture … Ι incorporate trivial unexpected objects and bits and pieces of our everyday life to give a 3dimensionality in my work …
… today more than ever, we need the truth … the truth that springs from the natural evolution of things … through time … and what could be a more typical example of the imprint of time on a surface … on an object … on us … fthora
… the findings of time passage over every alive, or lifeless that “lives” in our daily lives … affected by true-natural elements like water, air, sun, temperature … nothing remains intact over time … and that is the real beauty of it …
… so fthora will always remain as my source of inspiration for every project I start working on … and the story will go on …
SOLO SHOWS
2014 (fthor-ah’s) (ah-lee’-thi-a), Skoufa Gallery, Athens
2013 Do Air your Dirty Linen!, Point a (Herodion Hotel), Athens
2012 Cursive & Magic Squares, Skoufa Gallery Art Shop, Athens
2010 Mind Views, Studio 8, Athens
GROUP SHOWS
2014 “Script”, Skoufa Gallery, Athens
2014 “All Spank”, LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, New York City
2013 “Healing Trinity” at Hippocratic Medicine throughout the centuries, Goulandris Natural History Museum, Kifissia, Athens
2011 I love Tango, Zappeion Megaron, Athens Costa Navarino, Messinia Santa Marina, Myconos Elounda Mare Relais & Châteaux, Crete
2011 “Yesterday … Today … Day after … a linear route” at the 9th BAZART 2011-2012, Μ-ART Manolioudakis Gallery, Athens
2011 ”Lightness of Being” at Lightness of Being 2, Technopolis (Gazi) of the Municipality of Athens, Athens
2010 The Passage, Boxes ‘N’ Foxes, Athens
2009 “Animus – Anima” at The Last Page,
Gallery Tsitouras Collection, Athens
