Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center presents the fourth solo show by Maria Zervos at the gallery, an exhibition which includes drawings and a video installation.

The works on view explore imagery inspired by the artist’s recent climb to the top of Mount Olympus. In Zervos’ video installation Sky and Earth (Olympus) the artist combines elements from the moving image and performance with those of lyric poetry and ancient myth, in order to create a singular vision, both playful and structural. She develops a world that mirrors our own and where nature and culture, poetry and image can coexist alongside commentary on present social and political issues.

The colorful performers in her video and the acrobats in her drawings are recurring motifs for the artist, who finds inspiration in their intricate balance between movement and statics. While suspension serves as an underlying theme in many of Zervos’ new drawings, her new video installation centers more directly on the idea of support. Twelve performers at Mount Olympus form iconic structures with their bodies, such as a bridge and a wall, to emphasize the themes of collectivity, equality and gender. The video piece features text in different forms, including lyric poetry, giving the artist the opportunity to experiment with ideas deriving from ancient Greece. Seen together, the variety of her works in the exhibition underscores Zervos’ ceaseless examination of the juxtaposition between nature and culture with an aesthetic vocabulary ranging from personal to political.