Emerald Paintings: Stella Kapenazou’s solo debut at Skoufa Gallery
Stella Kapezanou Unveils Emerald Paintings at Skoufa Gallery
Skoufa Gallery is proud to present Emerald Paintings, the first solo exhibition in the space by acclaimed painter Stella Kapezanou — and perhaps her most incisive, seductive body of work to date.
In this striking new series, Kapezanou conjures hyper-saturated scenes where technicolor dreams shimmer with seductive promise — and disquiet. Her canvases radiate with the gleam of precious stones, but beneath the luminous surface lies a subtle tension, a vertigo-inducing flatness that curator Poka-Yio describes as “radioactive.” These works, he notes, are not simply beautiful; they question beauty itself. “How is it possible, in a neoconservative era, that such technicolor passions of sensuality and seduction occur?” he asks.
The figures that populate Kapezanou’s vivid tableaux seem suspended in limbo — painted in vitro, isolated in worlds of velvet wallpapers, patterned textiles, plush carpets, and staged décor. These are interiors of cultivated chaos, curated with theatrical precision. Yet nothing is incidental. The artist’s heroines lounge and linger in spaces that oscillate between the luxuriantly dreamy and the claustrophobically artificial. Their gazes, gestures, and surroundings form a closed circuit of beauty, estrangement, and performative stillness.
In this world of “irreverent flatness,” Kapezanou proves herself a virtuoso of the surface. Her brush dances between irony and intimacy, between aesthetic opulence and quiet defiance. “She skates on the surface with the grace of a champion,” Poka-Yio writes — and indeed, few artists today capture the paradox of surface as both mask and mirror with such elegance.
Kapezanou’s technique is one of studied spontaneity — structure and abandon in constant interplay. While her instinct leads the way, her control over composition and palette is razor-sharp. Her visual lexicon is rich, layered, and often unsettling, reflecting the frictions between sensuality and distance, confidence and vulnerability, fantasy and detachment. Each painting acts as a psychic projection, dazzling with color while hinting at an undercurrent of longing or unease.
There is, above all, a green that haunts the exhibition — the deep, immersive green of emeralds, envy, nature, and artifice alike. As Poka-Yio concludes, “to experience it, it is enough to immerse ourselves in its deep, hypnotic green.”
Find Kapezanou at the Skoufa Gallery at Skoufa 4, 106 73, Kolonaki | https://skoufagallery.gr/
