Review No. 01
Now that we have become accustomed to living in an age of optical overload, we need more people like Irma Voulgari to sort out the relentless parade of visual information which confront us daily.
In her large oil paintings we are invited to explore rather than look the everyday life, to reach out for the commonplace in an attempt to establish some order amid the chaos surrounding us.
Voulgari’s subjective impulses, intentions and motivations are directly translated / communicated onto the canvas - no post-edits or alterations are allowed: a microcosm of imagination arises from just lines and forms, where colour, light and space can mingle easily, and subversive energies are set free. The simple forms are far more complex and intricately articulated than they may at first appear. Their casual arrangement produces a set of completely hidden compositional forces that are virtually impossible to reproduce.
The overall composition is painted in rock-solid red, blue and green, radiant yellow, brilliant fuchsia and orange, lines and forms caught in some kind of force field that is pulling them wildly out of shape.
But that is a contradictory notion, because it's impossible to say what the form's original shape might have been. Evasiveness is, after all, the appeal of Voulgari's work, its ability to stage situations in a space somewhere between the viewer's psychological projections and the paint's physical realities.
Dr. Dimitra Barba
Artist
Review No. 02
“I wonder where all the world’s secrets lie?” This is the question my professor often asked with a smile, always followed by a momentary pause, as if allowing us some time to think. Then he would say: “On the surface, of course.” This statement always made me think of two things.
On the one hand, perhaps every secret is based on an instinct which is buried deep down and difficult to discover. And on the other hand, it was the reassurance that there is something deeper that defines and transforms what we actually conceive on the surface. This, I think, was the time when I began looking at things with greater depth. And this is exactly what I think when I look at Irma’s paintings. Despite all the surface tension, the real tension is found underneath.
While Irma is working she immerses herself in her painting, returning to a place where there are no rules and no regulations - except the need to go to the limits of your existence. I believe this is the essence of Irma’s work. Here you will find a fusion of emotions that clash with haunting memories - memories which often come back to inspire her – as well as the myriad colours, the explosion of shapes, the overflow of free forms that are reminiscent of some kind of primitive script or ancient hieroglyph.
Vasilis Vasiliades
Artist
Review No. 03
Irma Voulgari is inspired by the mundane and the unremarkable – the mass of insignificant details which make up daily life – as much as the extraordinary – the secrets hidden within the machinery of modern urban living. Her own unique vision is the essential catalyst which brings these seemingly disparate elements together and makes them come alive on the canvas.
Stand and look, from a distance, at one of her paintings and you will see the big picture – the broad, expansive brushstrokes and the surprising, sometimes jarring, sometimes beautiful, always fascinating juxtapositions of shape and colour.
Now take a journey: walk closer.
Move in, slowly, towards the window and see everything else that’s there, everything that you missed before. This is the microcosm. And in there are a profusion of intriguing and compelling worlds-within-worlds waiting to be discovered in Irma’s work. And remember, move closer, because travel expands the mind.
Graham Marks
Author
