Alexia Stamatiou
The Call to Adventure!
On View: September 8th - October 8th, 2011
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 8th, 6-8 PM
LaMontagne Gallery is pleased to present The Call to Adventure!, an exhibition of new works by Alexia Stamatiou.
In her new work, Alexia Stamatiou has shifted her focus from the end of life to its hopeful, euphoric beginnings. 'The Call to Adventure', the first stage of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, is described in The Hero with a Thousand Faces with the following: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered...". It is with this in mind that Stamatiou has begun illustrating the first steps of a cycle. This cycle details the quest of a civilization of mimes, examples of universal gesture and language, as they begin their mythic journey into existence. The paintings focus heavily on fertility symbols and the ecstasy of life, yet include the tiny presence of death, as death begets life. The focus of these paintings was conceived also with reference to the French term 'La Petite Mort', which equates orgasm with a kind of small death.
Alexia Stamatiou lives and works in Brookline. She received a BFA from The Cooper Union in New York, NY. Since 2004, Stamatiou has had solo shows at Allston Skirt Gallery in Boston, Bucket Rider Gallery in Chicago, Sunday Gallery in New York, and Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Miami. Stamatiou's work has also shown in group exhibitions at Sandroni Rey in Los Angeles, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Freight + Volume in New York, and Giant Robot Gallery in San Francisco. Stamatiou's work was most recently on view in Massachusetts at the Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, BK Projects in Watertown, and at The Beehive as part of Sting! X: Altered 'Scapes.