Despina Stokou

Derek Eller Gallery

October 14-November 13, 2016

Los Angeles-based Greek artist Despina Stokou is known for her large scale paintings dominated by repetitive lines and striking hues. While subconsciousness and spontaneity are crucial components in her practice, Stokou’s work is strongly influenced by technology, especially Google search. Contrasting to their tactile surfaces, her computer data-inspired paintings challenge traditional paths artistic endeavor follows. Her previous exhibition Only Tomatoes and Horses, for example, had introduced charcoal drawings generated by her meticulous online research about the subject fruit. 

“I’m very interested in communication and the way information passes—which is also a form of communication, in a way, but also what is left over. I don’t delete any messages or emails. Papers, even,” notes the artist in an interview with ArtSlant in 2014. Therefore, the sense of recycling run deeps in her work, embedding glimpses, moments, and information that could easily be neglected into the core of paintings. Stokou delivers hybrids of subconsciousness and palpability; of virtual and analog. If Cy Twombly was alive in 2016, he would, for sure, envy Stokou.