Volante IX (2021)

Description

This artwork, Volante IX (2021) by Alexandra Roussopoulos, is an acrylic on screen printing piece that exemplifies the artist’s exploration of lightness, movement, and spatial abstraction. Measuring 77 by 140 cm (30.3 by 55.1 inches), the painting features a geometric, multifaceted shape floating across a vibrant blue background, set within a distressed, screen-printed frame.

The central form is composed of interlocking planes of color—shades of blue, green, beige, and soft gray—that twist and fold into an organic, flowing shape. This faceted form seems to defy gravity, giving the impression of lightness and movement, which aligns with the artist’s concept of volante, meaning flying or airborne. The interplay of flat, sharp-edged color contrasts with the more fluid and intricate patterns found in the background, creating a visual tension that evokes both stillness and dynamism.

Beneath the floating form, the background is filled with screen-printed patterns that hint at traditional or decorative motifs, now worn and faded, giving a sense of history or time passing. The background’s deep blue hue, combined with the abstracted patterns, provides a visual depth that enhances the central shape’s presence, almost as if it is floating above or emerging from the layer beneath.

The distressed edges of the frame, which reveal the rawness of the underlying screen, add to the sense of wear and time, contrasting with the sharp, modern geometry of the central form. This juxtaposition of the old and the new, the worn and the precise, reflects Roussopoulos’s ongoing exploration of how elements of different eras and visual languages can coexist within the same space.

Volante IX invites viewers to contemplate the relationship between movement and space, the past and the present, and how form and color interact to create a sense of flow and balance. Through her use of acrylic on a screen-printed surface, Roussopoulos creates a piece that feels both grounded in historical reference and elevated by contemporary abstraction.

“My painting often escapes the traditional canvas on stretcher bars to venture onto all kinds of surfaces: textile, ceramic, wall, wood, or glass… The “Flying” series was painted on old silkscreens that I hunted down. Trace, memory lies at the heart of my work. I never pre-draw a structure, but it emerges as the painting progresses in an unstable balance, it arises in the favor of a loss of reference, a leap into the void with points of support. My palette starts with primary colors which I then mix extensively to associate them with additional hues. How one color lives alongside another, modifies it, creates a balance or imbalance, that’s what interests me. I love the tension of these sharp lines, the perfect boundary that is created between two colors, and the contrast between the existing background that I have reworked and the form that stands out. A dialogue is created between the exterior and the interior, between the landscape and the abstract form, drawing a spatial and temporal journey, that of the flying carpet, a symbol of takeoff and travel.“