Name: Zoe Keramea: Geometry of Paradox
Start: 2005-06-18
End: 2005-07-30
Location: The Drawing Center

72173b7677a16cd92648ac2a01be1e8b4b1c9c6e — Zoe Keramea: Geometry of Paradox

Zoe Keramea: Geometry of Paradox featured the work of Zoe Keramea, a New York-based contemporary artist. The engaging and mind-bending work of Keramea uses drawing and paper constructions to explore the visual paradoxes of illusionistic space. Through surprisingly simple motifs such as geometric shapes, tangled lines, and three-dimensional folded paper forms, Keramea's work challenges viewers' perceptions of spatial relationships.

For several decades, Keramea has created inventive works on and with paper that reflect a sense of delight in perceptual conundrums. With a reduced palette and spare graphic tools, her drawings and three-dimensional works push illusionistic devices to an extreme, superseding a logical understanding of physical space.

Geometry of Paradox featured Keramea's playful large-scale drawings, artist's books, "zoetype" prints (created through a unique process developed by the artist), and three-dimensional paper sculptures. Her folded paper constructions referenced malleable forms such as the Ouroboros, the mythological serpent devouring its own tail, in this case, as he dove through the gallery wall (Sea Serpent, 2005). Also referenced was the Hexahedron, which was repeated along a twisting plane (Spikey Moebius and Folded Flexible Plane, 2005). Keramea subtly altered the space of the gallery with Circumference (1997), her 33-foot long horizontal scroll that outlined the arc of a circle, drawn in shallow perspective, to hint at a perimeter curving around the viewer. By suggesting spatial relationships that can only exist in the mind, Keramea provokes the viewer to engage in active "seeing" rather than passive looking.

Accompanying the exhibition was a 24-page issue of the Drawing Papers publication series. Drawing Papers 54: Zoe Keramea featured 10 images of the artist's work and an essay by Kathryn Tuma, Associate Curator of Historical Exhibitions. Included in the Drawing Papers was a 16-page artist's book containing several interactive paper constructions, visual puzzles, and games created by Keramea. The Drawing Center also published a limited edition board game that was designed, signed, and numbered by the artist.

Zoe Keramea

Zoe Keramea explores enfolded surfaces using sculpture, printmaking, drawing, and ceramics. Keramea was born in Athens, Greece in 1955 and graduated from the Universitaet der Kuenste in Berlin in 1981. In 1989 she was awarded a Fulbright Grant for independent research in printmaking in New York. Keramea has shown her work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 18th Biennale of Sydney : all our relations in 2012, at the Museum of Modern Art NY, Artists’ Alphabets 2012, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Contemporary Drawings 2009, the Benaki Museum, Athens and MUDAM Musee d’Art Moderne, LuxembourgRRRIPP!! Paper Fashion, 2007 – 2008, the traveling exhibition FAX, organized by The Drawing Center and iCI - Independent Curators International, 2009 -2013. She has had solo shows in Athens , Berlin and New York. In 2006 she created Ringknot – A Woven Line at South Street Seaport with the participation of the public, as part of The Big Draw New York presented by The Drawing Center and River to River Festival. The digital version of her Mandala Memorygame, an App for the iPhone and the iPad , is the expanded version of a game first published in Drawing Papers 54, Zoe Keramea: Geometry of Paradox. It was awarded a 3rd place prize in Best App Ever Awards 2010. She lives and works in Athens and New York.