Alkisti Panagiotopoulou
Born 1992 in Patras, Greece. Lives and works in Naxos, Cyclades.
INTRODUCTION
She was born in Partas, Southern Greece, in 1992. She graduated from
the Faculty of Fine Arts and School of Visual and Applied Arts of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in 2018.
Since childhood she was searching within her the meaning of freedom and love. These were the qualities she recognized in the figure of her Teacher, Naya Karnava; qualities manifested in her life as well as in her Teaching. Thus she was trained by her side and she is teaching yoga as a member of the Yoga Science community.
Experience under the mentoring of her teacher, influenced the way she works in her artistic work as a sculptor. Through the sense of touch, she comes into contact with the being. She uses hermaterial and creates bodies as it converses with material, space and light. With one silent mind, the creative process becomes meditative. Creator and creation become one. Observation, awareness and silence are some of the tools for the expansion of consciousness with the aim of uniting material and spirit.
This union, as she describes, is the purpose of her art creations, but also mirages the whole of life.
During her studies she experimented with various materials such as wood, cement, wood pulp, ytong and liquid glass. In her diploma thesis, in 2018 she worked in the context of collectivity, exploring the frameworks of art. Assembling a team of children and adults she had them give form to their personal notion of home out of a construction material, called Ytong. Using the children’s clear perception and the dynamic of social sculpture she gave the opportunity to the participants, through freedom of expression, to become part of the process and of the final work.
In 2020 she returned to Patras, and she got involved with ceramics and clay. She delved intovarious techniques creating utilitarian objects and along the way she focused on the organic form and the plasticity, through a unique personal style. Her cause and inspiration is nature, geometry and human body. A usual element
of her works is the dynamic of elevation, a tendency for ascension. This element, as she conveys, stems from her personal view of mankind, where the divine spark inside of man creates the need for him to turn his look upwards.
In October 2022 she settled on the island of Naxos to work with marble and since then she apprenticed with the German sculptor and teacher Ingbert Brunk. Her contact with Naxian marble gives it a new possibility as the process here is abstract and the form is contained and disclosed. She is fascinated by the malleability of such a hard material, and this transparency that characterizes it, allowing the light to penetrate through it.
This is the Sacred Art of Life that makes Life and Art as One.
Through our eyes and the eyes of the world, we know ourselves and
the world. Creation is us.
Alkisti Panagiotopoulou
Elevation, 2022
clay
Alkisti Panagiotopoulou
Infinity, 2021
clay
Alkisti Panagiotopoulou
hand, 2021
clay
Alkisti Panagiotopoulou
Cross, 2018
Ytong
Alkisti Panagiotopoulou
geometric figure, 2018
Ytong
Alkisti Panagiotopoulou
geometric figure, 2018
Ytong
Photo by Ingbert Brunk’s lab, 2024
cV
Education
2012- 2018 Integrated Master in Fine Arts, School of Visual and Applied Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki GR
Exhibitions
2022 ‘You are the eyes through which Creation knows it self ’
at European Cultural Center of Delphi, Greece
2022 Visual vase, Kerameon Ichni group, Patras, Greece
2019 “ ART AND YOGA, Relations of Light and Color “,
studio Gnothis s’auton, Thessaloniki, Greece
2017 ‘‘58+26’’, Yeni Mosque, Thessaloniki, Greece