FINDINGS FROM PLANET EARTH Catalog text of the exhibition which took place in Thessaloniki in June 2000, at the Desing ARTCLUB gallery.

Everything occurs in an imaginary time, in a time where traces of the past will define a fictionary present and constitute the history of the future.

Tombstones and objects will provide to all contemporary archeologists the proper information, concerning lost civilizations.In this respect, Ioanna Kazaki creates a narrative code about the origins of the universe and of mankind. The figurative scriptures of the images compose sympols, myths and historical events; namely they compose a codified reality wich elaborates a certain type of ideogrames, exactly as in the Chinese alphabet, where the oral reading does not depend on the written word.Ioanna Kazaki intends to trasmit the images of various "realities" in repeated and stereotyped forms. Thus she invokes a technique where imprints "in rows" render a certain repetiveness, on the one hand ,and where the repetiveness on the other hand ,minimizes the tension of the included themes.Imprinting them on paper mass and using bas relief or hout relief, Ioanna Kazaki prints out images wrought in relief, which regulate and difine the frame as well as lead a circular interpretasion, concluding with a code which produces concepts through the signified forms.

Inspired by mythological topics, by ancient civilizations and by historical events, Ioanna Kazaki rather creates a certain type of "ornamental" alphabet like the one of Mesopotamia where ,while gods and heroes exchange names succesively, morphical patterns remain the same so that their perennial interpretation gains a certain historicity. Illustrasions in Ioanna Kazaki work can be conteplated either through a variety of forms indentical with their concepts so that a successive conceptual evolution of human history develops,or through the changes of concepts and the identify of forms so that in both cases the independence of the concepts from the form is emphasized and vice versa.

In addition to that, by distintantiating itself from the original form the conceptprovides a series of new images irrelevant to their origins.These images become monumental decorations of the depicted objects. Thus, our view decodifies how graphic shapes evolve whereas the activity of the depicted forms has a definite impact on our view. Ioanna Kazaki looks like she follows stict rules in order to develop her graphic shapes. These rules resolve in a total monotony, but its exactly them that emphasize an inexhaustible vitality when these images transform Ioanna Kazaki forms materialize themselves inside the materia of a history where the linguistic element becomes universal, conveyring a concrete world through full of deversities.

Dorothea Konteletzidou Art Historian U.S.H.S. II. Member at A.I.C.A

Microcosmos-Macrocosmos 2006-2011, is an installation composed of 20 flowers and a soundtrack that gives the typical stadium chatter during a football game. In fact, says the artist, "looking at the images from 'high above the crowds gathered, as in football events, I found similarities between these images and those of crowds of wild flowers”.

The title refers to a dual visual reality. On the surface, from a distance, it captures the tones speckled with yellow, blu, green etc.(microcosm), closely revealing the photographic matrix, with multitudinous viewers of a match or the human masses (macrocosm). At the center of the nucleus, a magnifying glass, through which the eye explores the inside of the flower, lit, with geometric motifs of the multiplied flower.

 The vision changes again in a reality apparently altered by a macroscopic lens that emphasizes .

Luisa Gagliardi Art Historian. 2015

“Man is not an object but a drama, an act... Life is a gerund and not a participle; it is a continuous becoming and not a fact. Characteristic of a man is not his nature but his history.”

Ortega y Gasset

The artistic process and practice in Ioanna Kazakis’ work follows an “exploratory” way of shapes and forms with an almost “ideogrammatical” substance and an intimate symbolistic function. The forms and symbols constitute a personal codified system of writing and painting, implying the independence of “mythical” thinking, as studied and analyzed by Claude Levi-Strauss, since it does not interconnect direct structures’ sets with profound concrete references (Plato’s “allegory of the cave”, Ancient Greek Tragedies), but uses experiential memory fragments and subconscious event remains (individual and collective memory).

The myth crossing any global intertemporal and historical tradition is perpetually renewed, reinterpreted and redefined, proving that it transfers the functionality of its’ mythical values per se in every new cultural and social context.

The myth, according to Paul Diel, compounds multiple psychic powers, constituting a concentrated human drama with evident and infernal meanings. It interprets multidimensionally the primary and psychological and mental realities.

These piecemeal and “on the go” theatricalized narrative fragments bring together multiple “obsessive” forms, which are returning back as “visual projections” with an intense internal pace.

The primarily horizontal arrangement of the background (oil pastel on paper) gets a painting schema with engraved interventions, thus harmoniously combining painting, engraving and writing. Painting narrates the reason and form of its figures.

Hence an almost "poetic" fragmentation of an Illustrated Word is formulated. These

isolated "elliptical" motifs and forms, coming from different cultural references as personal repetitive symbols, return back as a narrative obsession and function as "agents" of the image. The works, which are hung freely in different synthetic variations, constitute "trials" of visualization of internal conflict experiences and situations. A sense of levitation determined by the psychological background of personal symbols operates catalytically as a personal mediator between the divine (the absence - the absent) and the matter (the presence - the present). These "on the go" compositions as exercises of style (works-series-papyrus scrolls-narratives-fragments-scripts with almost handicraft qualities), with their own "secret" ideograms, are fragmentary works, compositions with a strong internal pace of growth and sequence. They enable the dynamic function of symbols, the elusive and emblematic character of universal timeless myths.

Dr. Sania Papa 2014

Art Historian

Lecturer in Aristotle University of Thesaloniki