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511 GALLERY is pleased to present Parallel Universe , a solo exhibition of new work by Maro Michalakakos, a Greek artist who mines fairy tales, dreams, and parables to make objects of sexual and political enigma.
In this series of eleven watercolor paintings, the artist appropriates John James Audubon's renowned paintings of birds, but dips them into surreal waters. In this alternate reality of parallel universes, a flamingo becomes prey to a shrimp entwined around its neck in a suffocating embrace, and a bald eagle can swim alongside a catfish in an otherwise empty sea of white paper. Predator and prey, otherwise hostile foes, become coupled in fantasy. According to Michalakakos, "these watercolors are, for all their ostensible calm, deliberately poised on the verge between fantasy and reality. They are, in fact, only a working hypothesis, where parallel universes seem to overlap on the level of fantasy, merging to produce hybrid results."
Michalakakos' exquisitely painted animals do not hide their references to traditional Western notions of nature and how animals behave—the works of Audubon, for example, represents 'beautiful nature' and a 'respect for wildlife,' are directly reinterpreted on her canvases. The artist names Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Edward Lear, and the photographer Andrew Zuckerman as additional sources. But, Michalakakos' translucent watercolors take those works into another reality, emphasizing a transient, dreamlike quality, rather than an accurate depiction of biological anatomy. She peels back traditional notions and unveils the detached sterility of the past.
At the same time, she pokes fun at the human tendency to anthropomorphize animals by attributing human characteristics to their behavior. She replaces the constructed narrative of animal behavior with her own erotic and playful undertones; it is this altered kingdom of animals that Michalakakos portrays as parallel to our own. In changing the narrative, she calls attention to constructions of the past and releases the animals from these constraints; she allows them, and us, to be truly natural and to be ourselves. In this way, the animals of Parallel Universe are, in fact, a pure and unrepressed depiction of humanity.
Maro Michalakakos's work has been widely exhibited in Europe and the United States. Recently, her large metronomes were shown in the windows of Hermès in Athens, in an installation entitled Beautiful Escape. Other installation pieces and paintings by Michalakakos are currently on view at the National Theatre of Greece, and at the upcoming exhibition Nightwatch at the Art Foundation in Greece. In 2006, she was nominated for the Castellon County Painting Prize in Valencia, Madrid. Michalakakos was trained at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts de Cergy Pontoise (France) and the School of Fine Arts in Braunschweig, Germany. The artist lives and works in Athens, Greece.
Parallel Universe will open at 511 GALLERY on May 13th, with a reception from 6:00 to 8:00pm, and run through mid-June; it will then continue to 511 GALLERY, Lake Placid.
