GALLERYX PRESENTS TENDER WOUNDS An exhibition of new works by Christina Tzani

23/01 – 20/02 2016
Preview and performance on 22/01 @ 6PM
65 South William Street D2 (first floor)

GalleryX – the new Dublin space for unsettling art – is delighted to introduce to Ireland the work of Greek painter Christina Tzani. Her work focuses on harrowing images of the abuse of children, drawing us into a false sense of security and beauty before confronting our exposed senses with uncomfortable and unavoidable force.

The exhibition will include oil paintings and ink drawings on paper and on canvas, and will be opened on 22 January at 6PM in the presence of the artist and of H.E. Mrs. Katia Georgiou, Ambassador of Greece in Ireland. A musical performance will take place during the opening.

Abused children live in a nightmare. Some of them can’t even sleep.

Christina’s art focuses our mind on the scourge of child abuse, using aesthetically pleasing colours in order to sensitise viewers and enhance their feeling of guilt when looking at the images of hurt children. The pictures powerfully communicate the victims’ isolation, rejection and abandonment as their personality withers in a torn and wounded existence.

Every child has the right and a need for love and security. Yet child abuse has existed in every society throughout human history. The physical weakness of a child, and their absolute dependency on adults, makes them easy prey.

Christina’s children look sorrowful, as the abuse transcends childhood and leaves its scars onto the adult and onto the entire society, demanding that we take action. Violence is an integral part of the inspiration of artists throughout the centuries. From the hunts in cave paintings to crucifixion to war, the depiction of violence has united artists and audiences with its power to admonish and inspire. By using pleasing colours and calm white backgrounds to lure the viewer closer to these monstrous images, Christina continues in this tradition and creates a distorted, unsettling world of beauty and mutilation, harmony and horror. Her works in ink and oil connect today’s reality and the ominous, unknown outcome of these small wounded lives.

The strong red colours describe despair and the erosion of humanity, and contrast with cool colours that indicate the absence of life – in this case a spiritual rather than corporeal death, the victory of indifference and bitterness. Traumatised and blood-stained lips mark the sacrilegious abuse of the very location through which nourishment and affection should flow. Half-open mouths and wounds contribute to the paintings’ emotional charge.

These artworks lie in an ever-shifting grey zone between beauty and ugliness – they represent beauty that shines through horror, but also unconquered horror that irrevocably stains the purest beauty. Sometimes, the hideous moves us to compassion and mesmerises us through the complexity of feeling that it evokes – can we really find pleasure in contemplating such pain?

Artist bio:

Christina Tzani is a graduate of the University of Western Macedonia’s School of Fine Arts (Florina, Greece) and has taken part in many group exhibitions, including “Fresh ’15: Happy Accidents”, “Biennial Castra 2015”, “Fid Prize 7” and “7th Biennial of Students of the Fine Arts Schools of Greece”. She works mainly through the medium of painting.