«Dairies - Speech and Image in a Small Dimensions»
(2012 Cultural stage KETHEA DIAVASI, Athens)

The requirement is the exaltation of the human consciousness" 2012 Kalliopi Kountouri
Introductory note for the exhibition "Diaries - Speech and Image in Small Dimensions, 2012, KETHEA DIAVASI

A few things can really underline so reflectively and inclusively the debate between the private and the public, the personal and the social as the artistic form of a Diary. Eleni Polychronatou composes an aesthetic "work" or better yet, introduces a versatile combination which accurately interweaves the visual vocabulary of color - in an ideology of words.

In her "Diaries", the dreamlike calligraphic visual word is ideally in line with the ideals of contemplative dictums, which often surprises the spectator and challenge him to embark on an unexpected vehicle of pensiveness; at times it enlightens his existing artistic constitution, it culminates into a settlement, and at times it sharpens his dreamlike state. However, the semiotic systems of word and image interact with each other productively in Polichronatous projects yet they stand independently and so composing a chapter of the diary, in which the cumulative speech is so clear and artfully interlaced so that no other change or transfer can be achieved without compromising the integrity of the whole. Therefore, the project captivates in its dynamic balance.

In the manner that each diary, as those of Heleni Polichronatou reveal and conceal, violently open as windows and "shut" inside its independent experience. On their tour they invite into the internal universes and microcosms, but also appear in the "us" in the depth of the human speech, which in any case underlies in the works of Polichronatou. Familiarity meets universality and the phenomenal presence of a diary, the timelessness of pure emotion and of the philosophical existential design.

Art does not have, or never should have, autistic fortifications in its "independence". Up until now the artful impressions of Heleni Polichronatou, particularly the subject of her thesis (Visual Artworks on a Big Scale, in Urban and Natural Spaces. From the Decade of the 60's till the 21stCentury) emphatically proclaim the ideological consistency of the artist: art cannot be entrenched or fortified, it does not charm conceit, it cannot be "institutionalized".