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ATHENS
Zoë Paul
THE BREEDER
Zoë Paul's solo exhibition "Solitude and Village" embodied a harmonious universe where the divine resides within the domestic, the individual alongside the collective. Like a cross between a cult temple and a midcentury living room, the space was arrayed with seven disembodied clay heads supported by architectural platforms, the walls covered in frescoes of giant nudes engaging in sexual acts or relaxing in solitary poses, each painted in expressive strokes of natural clay and whitewash. The stylized sculptures recalled Modern Primitivism; the arrangement of the irregularly shaped plinths, topped with decorative floor tiles, invoked a syncopated jazz rhythm. Marred by cracks as if ancient relics, the male faces had frozen expressions, their mouths open as if in midsentence.
Paul makes weavings using discarded, often rusted, refrigerator shelves as warps, which she forages from around the island of Kithira, where she spent much of her childhood, and with yarn salvaged from deconstructed traditional Greek blankets. Some of these abstract compositions are based on the allegorical hand gestures of Byzantine and Catholic saints attesting to...