12 Women of Maria Stamati

Thematic and semantic counterbalance of her painting, Maria Stamati’s poetry refers to her painting without being subservient to it; primary and autonomous word, it simultaneously memorializes the visual gesture with a sense of thoughtful and contemplative, floating from the molecular elements of existence to the infinite magnitudes of the Whole.

It is neither a cerebral contemplation that accumulates in itself, nor a lyrical diffusion, but an inwardness that, cleansed of illusions and naked, is detached from its silent depths to become consciousness, and to be thrown, alone and bound, into the “universe of winds” – in the harsh dialectic of the world. And in the seismic upheavals of life, transient but also suffering, she struggles to determine her own stigma and to grasp the meaning of her own adventure.

According to the definition of the school of Andre Martine, French linguist, if poetry is the surprise caused by the coupling of mutually contradictory or incompatible words, then Maria Stamati’s poetry largely corresponds to this: her words invade unexpected, precipitous and following abrupt correlations and they establish an opposite relationship – an element generating paradoxical meaning but not a paradox. It is because, similar to the poetic system of the last two decades’ poets, her poetic system runs the risk of being dragged into solutions of convenience, trapping clever ingenuity, imaginative imagery, words juggling and pirouettes; in other words, in a purely formalistic game, which forms glossy surfaces with a thin testimony of truth uniquely and irreplaceably personal.

This risk is very substantially avoided here. A sharp, short style, with words that sometimes fall like rosary beads, they sometimes come down like guillotine blades and they sometimes drip like raindrops; often without a connection and spoken out, with the sentence welcoming the next movement and giving retrospectively its meaning; with memories of once Calvian sounds and lessons from the surreal expressive: the whole result shows that the game is more than a game, that it is not done in the purely formalistic field; the contact of words creates sparks that are intertwined with meanings, which peel the dramatic nuclei from their external elements – the evocative atmosphere is not a decor and an end in itself.

Poetry is not chemistry; it is rather alchemy, where the logical outlines are shattered by the eternal search for the philosophical stone and the Grail. In Maria Stamati’s’ poetry, each thematic unit has its secret gallery to the secret depth of the cave, from where, lively and threatening, the breath of the incarnates emanates.

Giannis Kalioris

The painting of M.S.

Verbal communication contributed decisively to the evolution of the human race. During the infinite time, the verbal communication is proved to be finite. There are human mental states that cannot be expressed in everyday language and they seek other forms of expression.

The solution was eventually found. Art offered a way of expression. The poetic, musical and visual language was formed.

The visual language records on inanimate matter the ideas and feelings of the time and place that give birth to it and breed it.

And it has essentially become the fragile seismograph of human society. It even shapes psychographic aniconic states that go as far as the space of the subconscious. Thus painting can become a window of vision into our undiscovered inner life.

Maria Stamati’s recent visual language is heading towards this psychographic direction.

Her paintings could be called aniconic but they also move beyond the abstract. M. Stamati invites us to flee in this direction, into the space of the imaginary and the unmeasured.

In some of her paintings, colour and arranging seem to depict silent awaiting.

There are airy paintings that call for an exodus on the wings of winds.

Other paintings are tortured, filled with bitterness and deadlock.

And other paintings hide bright expectations and optimism in their dark background.

This is how, M.S. communicates her rich and interesting psychic world with us.

Nikos Alexiou