Eleni Psyllaki (b. 1981) was originally trained as an architect and it’s her background in architecture and design which informs her art practice. Her paintings and works on paper are characterized by linear sketching, straight lines, scaling, and above all a love for symmetry. The strict geometry and precision of her works are a continuation of the free sketching one comes across in architectural drawings. Her color palette is infused with balanced earthly tones inspired by her birthplace Crete.

In her paintings, we can discern the beige of stone, the brown of tree trunks, the olives’ khaki, and the gold of summer cobs. Her forms on the other hand are strict and minimal and rooted in abstraction where any surplus information or detail is eliminated infusing the works with a Doric quality. In this way, Psyllaki likes to draw attention to the contours, hard edges, and pure tonality of the form.

Her artworks are populated by various representations of vessels both historical and imaginary. Despite their descriptive outline, forms are seen as a flat space that can encompass meaning. Here the artist plays with the form of the vessel and what it encapsulates as well as with the notion of the void and what it enfolds be that wine like in ancient Greece or an idea and emotion. Psyllaki’s vessels always have an entrance and an exit with the bottom side left open-ended acting as a metaphor for the union between the divine and the terrestrial.