in nominee Dei

The Contemporary Art Museum of Crete is holding, since December 14, 2022, the exhibition with 60 sculptural poems by Maria Methymaki, entitled “in nominee Dei”, under the curation of Maria Marangou.

As analyzed by the art historian Maria Sfendouraki “in nominee Dei: 60 sculptural poems” is the second work by artist Maria Methymaki presented in the form of a book.

We are being offered a cosmology of religious and philosophical breadth that is reminiscent of Byzantine manuscripts and Renaissance codices. Its creative core consists in the mystical nature of amorous love. It numbers 60 leaves of handwritten – cipher-like – original erotic poetry.

It is a mixed media work that the artist treated sculpturally as regards the three-dimensionality of the medium paper. Thus, each leaf is a stand-alone work of dual frontality, where written language is a material medium and an integral part of the composition. The work was developed as an enlarged photocopied reproduction of the prototype, establishing a working method that stems from her viewpoint relative to being-in-the-world.

The artist has, from the outset, entrusted the process of creation to the uncontrollable, to randomness. The work’s previous stage was integrated as experiential imprint and memory trace. Methymaki is calling attention to the aesthetic qualities of the materials as well as to the morphoplastic possibilities of point and line, while preserving their archaicity and cultural scope.

By entwining in a timeless spatiality scripts, sacred and personal symbols, archaic artistic elements and motifs from older and newer civilizations, with signs deriving from today’s world and popular culture, she composed a modern codex, about the mystery of humanity’s communion with the world. The artist created a work/exhibition that assumes the form of a book, inviting the viewer to examine its pages with her or his eyes.

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