AOTEAROA
“Journey to the reality of a dream”

 

“All I can see, hear, touch and believe in in this world, exists inside my own heart”,

Khalil Gibran
   

Antigoni Pagona is a sweet, tender, emotional being, who captures and externalizes a rich inner world through her sensitive outlook. As a modern wanderer, she journeys in cultures of faraway places, in countries and destinations that arouse our imagination and enrich our dreams. Having lived herself in two home countries, Greece and Monaco, she uses her experiences, her knowledge, her instincts and she determinedly rises up to each challenge. Being of inexhaustible vitality and unparalleled will, perseverance and genuine emotion, she seeks places that will lead her to a process of pondering, contemplating and associative thinking, peaceful places of internal searching, meditation and self-knowledge. Exotic destinations that have already inspired great creators in the past.

“Aotearoa”, in the language of Māori, is the geographically isolated New Zealand. It is the «Land of the Long White Cloud”, which enchants and moves with its natural landscape of incomparable beauty. Consisting of two large islands and a multitude of smaller ones in the southwest of the Pacific Ocean, it was colonised by Polynesians, Europeans and mainly the British, bringing together intriguing multi-cultural elements. 

Antigoni Pagona tours us around important cities and sights, revealing images of rare, incomparable, unique flora and fauna. 

The landscape of the country that has been a source of inspiration for historical films and spectacles, with its volcanic land and geothermal phenomena, becomes the topography of a primitive and primordial world. The enormous white clouds floating low in the clear blue skies, over green forests and blue lakes, excite and dominate the senses.    

The exhibition demonstrates the artist’s dual creativity; it is a joint artistic creation which expresses the beauty of the world in her personal style, using simultaneously and independently the art of photography and painting. A creative dialogue develops between the two arts, photography and painting, a contiguity between reality and illusion, in thematic succession, a connection of meaning and concept but also of aesthetics. The diversity of the expressive means guide the viewer to enjoyment and pleasure, as well as to the complementary function and commingling of arts to reveal its sensuality.

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She uses the camera lens to capture images of nature in spectacular views.  She transmits the mesmerism of the moment and the allurement of the ephemeral, becomes the huntress of time to render them timeless. She visually supplies us with unforgettable experiences of an unexpected, rich and unique photographic collection, expressing the unconventional beauty of the landscape, the pulse of the country, its own land. Scenery with images that escape the present, charged with energy, become one with harmony and seek the ultimate bliss. Images that captive the thoughts, which understand the relationship between a look and the imagination and progressively obey to the emergence of the senses. Various and intense emotions overwhelm the viewer. Sensitivity, sensation, respect for the environment, architectural displays of technological progress, humorous scenes overflow from the experiences that become a narration in their development. The grandeur of nature with its successive changes of colours, fascinating shades of green and blue create tranquillity, serenity and euphoria. The light characteristic of the Southern Hemisphere is dominant in all pictorial views, declaring the artist’s preferences. 

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Her painting thematic approach supplements and extends Antigoni Pagona’s love for nature. She looks through a child’s eyes, constantly enriching the images in her theme from the animal and plant kingdom, and she renders the form of big, scary animals with a cute and playful look, as well as unprecedented familiarity.

Her painting pallete includes basic, bright colours, clean geometric shapes and stable lines; it is easy to read and it arises emotions in the viewer. The combinations and mixes of colours follow the repetitive direction of a rainbow in an inexhaustible variety and explosive composition of all colour shades. She connects colours to the spontaneity of expression, creating feelings of euphoria and revival. Proportions maintain their harmony, outlines are clean and clear, lines are simple, surfaces are flat and rendered with simplicity.

The shapes have perfect balance in a single composition and they transmit all the traits of innocence. Her stable and determined brushes emit self-confidence and the intention to express herself with no restrictions.        
The selection of painting themes reveals the symbolic extend and dimension of the shapes. The viewer is not indifferent to the dynamic shape of a horse as a symbol of speed, agility, as well as courage. The aggressive presence of the wolf also represents maternal care at the same time, while the timeless symbol of fertility, creation, inspiration and liberation in Buddhism, the symbol of Christ, the fish, attracts our interest and attention.

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The art of Antigoni Pagona is a modern expression of ancient, timeless and always current questions, which she raises in a crucial, substantial, definitely allusive manner and with a discreet approach.

The relationship between man and nature which cannot be separated, but who walk together towards fulfilment and creation.

Annita Patsouraki – Art Historian

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